The White House ramped up its campaign to persuade the Senate to renew National Security Agency surveillance powers before they expire at midnight Sunday, likening a potential lapse to playing “Russian roulette” with national security.

An unknown group has launched a website that profiles people affiliated with pro-Palestinian student groups – publishing their names, photos, occupations and sometimes universities and majors – in an effort to dissuade potential employers from hiring them.

Canary Mission went live in mid-May and includes profiles of 54 people, primarily university students and professors, with photos and links to their social media profiles.

“It is your duty to ensure that today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s employees,” a video explanation of the project warns.

A federal judge has thwarted an attempt to force the release of the Senate report on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) torture program.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s full report on the CIA interrogation program. The executive summary of the report was previously made public, albeit with numerous redactions.

But U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg rejected the ACLU’s request, ruling the report remains a congressional record and thus isn’t subject to the FOIA. When Congress created FOIA in 1966, it made sure to exempt the legislative branch from its provisions.

Attorney Jack Scarola penned a 5-page letter to the US Department of Justice dated 9/11/2014. Scarola wanted DOJ to investigate Sheriff Ric Bradshaw's deputies and not only their rogue behavior but also what goes on within internal affairs investigations and the command staff;

The FBI took up matter and is investigating. Attorney Stuart Kaplan, former FBI SA, also has many issues with the outright fraud being committed by Ric Bradshaw's PBSO. Kaplan's investigation for his client lead him to review traffic camera recordings which completely contradict the sworn testimony of the deputies who shot a handicapped teenage boy 3 times - including in the head.

Dare to publish a scientific study against Big Biotech, and Monsanto will defame and discredit you. For the first time, a Monsanto employee admits that there is an entire department within the corporation with the simple task of ‘discrediting’ and ‘debunking’ scientists who speak out against GMOs.

The WHO recently classified glyphosate, a chemical in Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Roundup, as carcinogenic – news that is really heating things up with biotech. So Monsanto has been demanding that the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) retract their statements about the poisons’s toxicity to human health.

Relying on the provisions of the Constitution as ultimate proof, the petition presents incontrovertible evidence that no contemporary federal court has jurisdiction anywhere within the exterior limits of any of the 50 freely associated compact states of the Union.

This means that federal law is enforceable only in the District of Columbia and the Territories—and every United States District Judge in every United States District Court throughout the Union is usurping exercise of jurisdiction in extra-constitutional geographic area and culpable for treason to the Constitution:

“We have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given, than to usurp that which is not given. The one or the other would be treason to the constitution. . . .” Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264, 6 Wheat. 265, 5 L.Ed. 257 (1821).

It turns out that the gun that the woman used to perform the murder was registered with the police department, and was actually a service weapon that belonged to an officer.

The woman eventually confessed to investigators that the gun belonged to her son, a police officer, who let her use it and indeed was orchestrating the murder behind the scenes, according to reports.

“The evidence we believe shows he conspired with his mother ahead of time and assisted her in making the crime succeed,” said Charles County State’s Attorney Anthony Covington.

“That’s first-degree murder,” he added.

A police lieutenant has been charged with three felonies involving child sexual abuse.

Lt. Stites faces a count of lewd molestation as well multiple charges of sexual abuse.

The victim is said to be under 12 yrs old.

In fact, reports say that Lt. Stites assaulted a 3-yr-old girl multiple times.

During his hearing, Lt. Stites remained silent.

An Advanced Practice Registered nurse performed an examination on the child and determined that there was sufficient physical evidence that a sexual assault occurred, according to reports.

Body cam footage captured the shocking moment two police officers forced pregnant woman to the ground while her hands were behind her back despite the fact that she did not commit a crime.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is running out of time to save sections of the Patriot Act that the White House deems crucial to national security.

Top lawmakers and their aides are scrambling to find a last-minute deal to save the law, which is speeding toward expiration — at midnight Sunday — after a series of Senate votes failed to resolve an impasse over the National Security Agency (NSA).

At this point, it’s hard to be surprised by the extreme punitiveness of America’s criminal justice system. One thing that can still shock, though, is how police manhandle actual children. Not only is treatment of children severe (police in Arizona recently mulled over the possibility of charging an 8-year-old as an adult), but our system is undiscerning; we can, and do, arrest kids for virtually anything, including completely normal childhood misbehavior. In fact, many youth, particularly people of color from low-income households, come into contact with their first handcuffs in school. Here are some of the stranger examples of this depressingly American practice.

The Cleveland Police Department agreed Tuesday to adhere to new regulations on how and when officers can use force as well as strict oversight by police supervisors, the New York Times reported. The deal is part of the Ohio city's settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over what federal officials deemed a “pattern or practice” of unnecessary force and unconstitutional tactics.

Techdirt has been at the forefront of pointing out the dangers of including investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in so-called trade agreements. Indeed, we even helped come up with a new term -- corporate sovereignty -- to make clear that ISDS is really about placing corporations on the same level as entire nations, and giving them a unique power to sue a country for alleged harms before special tribunals. But there's an additional aspect to this, which is explored in an insightful article by Sam Fowles on The Conversation.

He points out that although we don't know in detail what the US-EU TAFTA/TTIP agreement will contain, we do have the text for the one between Canada and the EU, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (pdf), known as CETA. The European Commission has said many times that it aims to build on the corporate sovereignty chapter in CETA when it comes to negotiating TTIP.

Incidentally, it is now well known that both Al Qaeda and ISIS were created, funded, trained and armed by the CIA and other US security and military agencies themselves, in order to stir up violence that could then be used as excuses to intervene with military force towards covert political and financial ends. All according to objective international analysts, coinciding with highly credible sources within the US establishment itself.

Is it then reasonable to expect small countries like Sweden to tacitly accept the responsibility of caring for the resulting destitute refugees?

A new website is publicizing the identities of pro-Palestinian student activists to prevent them from getting jobs after they graduate from college. But the website is keeping its own backers’ identity a secret.

... it’s not just license plates that are being made in prison. Today, inmates “produce apple juice, raise tilapia, milk cows and goats, grow flowers, and manage vineyards.” CCI pays only 60 cents per hour for the inmates’ labor, although some manage to earn a whopping $3-400 a month.

Neither a conspiracy nor conjecture: By every quantitative measure, 21st century America has degenerated from being the beacon of democracy to a neo-feudal state.??From crime and punishment to the vast wealth and income-inequality gap, the rules are different for the political elite and economic nobility than they are for the common man bound to live by the letter of the law and brought to justice for minor infractions — all while political insiders, corporate charlatans and financial bandits are left free to rape, pillage and plunder.

When Baltimore exploded in protests a few weeks ago following the unexplained paddy-wagon death of a young African-American man named Freddie Gray, America responded the way it usually does in a race crisis: It changed the subject.

The city of Cleveland has reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department over a pattern of excessive force and civil rights violations by the police department, a senior federal law enforcement official told the Associated Press Monday.

California may be facing a water crisis, but a 71-year-old Los Angeles widow’s struggle to pay for utilities has taught her just how precious the natural resource can be.

Doris Tillman told The Los Angeles Times that she was forced to stop paying for water after the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power sent her a bill for $11,000. She just assumed that the enormous bill must be a mistake.

DWP cut off her water last August. To survive, the 71-year-old woman hauls 50 gallons each week from a nearby water machine — at a cost of about 25 cents a gallon.

Last week, according to the Washington Times, hired protesters who haven’t been paid held a sit-in at the Missourians Organizing for reform Now (MORE) offices and posted a demand letter online. Similarly, protesters with the Black Lives Matter movement have started a #CutTheCheck hashtag and held a sit-in at the offices for the successor group to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in Missouri after the group allegedly stopped paying them. MORE has been paying protestors $5,000 per month to demonstrate in Ferguson.

What about America's liberal media elite? Do they, too, have some sort of legal immunity? Not technically as there are no laws or constitutional provisions that specifically exempt progressive elitist members of the press from legal prosecution.

However, author Katie Pavlich, news editor of the conservative TownHall.com news and opinion web site, says they might as well have immunity because they get away with criminal behavior that would likely land ordinary citizens behind bars all too often.

Meanwhile, journalists — most of whom would fecklessly tell you they're free-speechers — are constantly trying to invent exceptions to protected speech.

Case in point: Pamela Geller, the anti-Muslim activist, wound up being blamed for an attack by two extremist Muslim gunmen on one of her nasty events in Texas recently because she crossed some imaginary free-speech line.

In the minds of several media analysts, she should somehow have been stifled. (Of course, had Geller been sexually assaulted and the same logic applied, it would be denounced as "survivor blaming.")

Tech industry giants say they are alarmed the federal government would demand back-door access to the encryption built into their products. Are they crying crocodile tears? Maybe, but the point is still a good one.

Imagine if, instead of memory chips, we were talking about your home's back door. It most likely contains a lock. Your family members have keys. They can come and go freely while others cannot. This is how locks should work.

The FBI says it can't do its job unless it has unimpeded access to your house, so it asks you to give it a spare key. The FBI further promises it will only use the key to enter your home in emergencies. Would you give it to them?

It's one thing to say a federal scientist can't publicly publish details on how to build an H-bomb. It's quite another thing to say US Senators can't reveal, to the American people, what they're voting on.

There is no Constitutional basis for such an assertion. In fact, it's a direct violation of the Separation-of-Powers principle.

By assigning National Security secrecy-status to the details of the TPP, the Executive Branch is arbitrarily muzzling the Congress.

We're witnessing a stunning farce.

American spy agencies have intentionally weakened digital security for many decades. This breaks the functionality of our computers and of the Internet. It reduces functionality and reduces security by – for example – creating backdoors that malicious hackers can get through.

The spy agencies have treated patriotic Americans who want to use encryption to protect their privacy as extremists … or even terrorists.

As Gizmodo’s Matt Novak points out, this attack started at the very birth of the internet:

Check out this textbook written in 1970 by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, the precursor to the textbook Ecoscience they wrote with Obama Science Czar John P. Holdren seven years later. The book advocates all manner of horrors to depopulate what they consider an overpopulated world, including everything from adding sterilants to the water and food to producing a sterilizing virus that requires a vaccine antidote one could apply for... it's a nightmare.

As such, it was pretty shocking to find a passage where the authors excitedly discuss using stevia rebaudiana — the same sweet leaf hailed everywhere today as a wonderful, healthy sugar alternative — as an anti-fertility agent