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In April, The New York Times' Charles Savage asked the government to release a list of the people still detained at the government's prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. On Monday the Justice Department responded, providing one of the first complete looks at who the United States is holding, and what it plans to do with them.
It is possible that Edward Snowden is a Chinese spy, as Dick Cheney might have you believe. If he is, Snowden is one of the most capable and least predictable spies in American history. A cursory look at the evidence at hand suggests that Cheney is wrong.
We may have to wait another week or so for the Supreme Court's decisions on two key same-sex marriage cases, but we at least now have a better sense of which media outlets reflect our prejudices on the issue. Supporter of same-sex marriage? You're in luck; nearly every outlet leaned that way. Opponent? Meet Mr. Limbaugh.
Rep. Darrell Issa is committed to getting you to refocus your anger on the IRS scandal, no matter how long it takes.
If a federal court determines that the NYPD systematically violated the civil rights of residents through its stop-and-frisk behavior — which the court probably will — the Department of Justice may provide a monitor for oversight. Bloomberg is mad about it, to which there is only one reasonable response: Get over it.
What FBI head Robert Mueller and the NSA really need this week is simple. They need a terror attack they can point to and say: "Our surveillance tools, the ones everyone is complaining about, stopped that." They're still looking.
Last year, for apparently the first time, more non-Hispanic white people died than were born. Other trends confirmed by the Census compilation of population estimates for the year 2012 were expected: the U.S. population is shifting to the Southwest, getting older, with more people moving to cities.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation scored a remarkable — and remarkably timely — legal victory on Wednesday. The secret court at the center of the recent NSA surveillance revelations allowed the group's push for the release of a ruling on violations of Americans' Fourth Amendment rights to move forward.
The Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday turned its sights on Gen. Keith Alexander, the NSA's U.S. Cyber Command Director. The senators were warned that the hearing was not meant to focus on a week full of cyberspying leaks. But some of them weren't feeling at all obliged to be so nice.
Edward Snowden was not the first high-profile person to reveal secrets about the NSA's surveillance operations after September 11th. He was the third. The first two have come forward to express support for Snowden, in part, one can assume, hoping that this time something actually changes.
After five straight days of revelations, a three-day gap in new NSA leaks seems like an eternity. The last major revelation was Snowden himself, on Sunday. The reason for the delay isn't clear, but two other things are: There's more to come, and some of it — if not all — could come directly from Snowden, who re-emerged today. Glenn Greenwald, who is also set to re-emerge after a full day of travel, tells The Atlantic Wire that Snowden "might" have a contingency plan.
Americans are weighing in on how they want the Supreme Court to rule on upcoming cases dealing with affirmative action and gay marriage, and eventually some court to decide the new NSA spying suits. Their opinions — against, for, and mixed, respectively — are, of course, irrelevant to what the courts do.
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit against the NSA and others following confirmation its access of Verizon data. This might represent the first strong threat to the NSA's surveillance system — and it's not even the only push brought by civil liberties groups on Tuesday.
"I welcome this debate," President Obama said of the NSA revelations. But with swaths of the security state still shrouded by classification, open debate is hard to come by. Which is why a group of senators introduced a bill Tuesday to expose at least one element of those measures to a little more openness. Will it work? Can anything? That might come down to the word "terrorist."
Your perception of Chicago's murder problem isn't quite correct. While the city has seen a rash of shootings, many deadly, the murder rate is actually at a low for the year, on-pace with the 1960s. But it is also at a low point — and moving in several new directions — compared to another era of high crime in Chicago: Prohibition.
When Rep. Peter King referred to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as "a defector," he seemed to be channeling the political lexicon of 1983, not 2013 — much less 1984. Or maybe he was being prescient. Reports this morning indicate that Russia would consider a request by Snowden to seek asylum in that country. Here's how that would work.
A bit of good news for the 265 sitting members of Congress who voted to extend the PATRIOT Act: 56 percent of Americans thinks doing just that is just fine. As a majority also did seven years ago.
A once-controversial provision of the Affordable Care Act that adds a ten percent tax to indoor tanning sessions will soon become permanent. Good news for Obamacare, which will garner an estimate $2.7 billion in revenue every ten years from the move. Bad news for people who don't want to pay slightly more for a tanning session.
There's a rule, known as Betteridge's law of headlines, which states that any headline written as a question can be answered, "no." It holds true in this case. Or it probably will, if past polling is any indicator.
The Democrats have joined the release-partial-transcripts-from-IRS-interviews game, dropping a memo outlining how a Republican IRS manager in Cincinnati identifies himself as the origin of the Tea Party controversy. Partial transcripts should be taken with a grain of salt — but the IRS apparently keeps sanctioning people anyway.
Edward Snowden wasn't your traditional spy. He was, however, a very modern one, a guy who worked from a computer terminal in an office, similar to how a modern bomber pilot might control his drone. The weekend's big revelations about the NSA's biggest leaker prompt a natural question: How many Snowden-type spies with top secret security clearance are there?
This week's revelations about the National Security Agency's hyperactive interest in seeing what's happening online probably inspired you to wonder how much that privilege is costing you.
Cyberwar is all-but-officially the new Cold War. In its third major scoop in three days, and just hours before President Obama was to sit down to talk cyber-attacks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, The Guardian reported that Obama ordered a list to be drawn up for preemptive Internet-based disruption, similar to the military's long-standing list of nuclear weapon targets. What's more, the directive includes targets within the United States.
After two-and-a-half dizzying days of revelations about NSA surveillance, President Obama offered an assurance: "[W]ith respect to the Internet and emails," he said, "this does not apply to U.S. citizens, and it does not apply to people living in the United States." Which depends heavily on how you define "apply." So we spoke with some people and did a little poking around to figure out how much you might need to worry about the government accessing your private information.
This afternoon, the FBI arrested Shannon Rogers Guess Richardson for sending ricin-tainted letters to Obama and Michael Bloomberg. There are perhaps worse ways to lash out at your estranged husband than to threaten the life of the president, but none come immediately to mind.
Each of the three branches of the government was involved the NSA privacy breach. Congress passed the law legalizing the behavior. Judges signed off on doing so, for the administration, who was asking. "If people can't trust" all three branches, President Obama said Friday afternoon, "we're going to have some problems here." But if Americans want to halt the behavior, each branch does hold a possible solution. Here's a detailed breakdown.
People in Washington received information about the IRS's improper targeting of Tea Party groups in July 2010, significantly earlier than has been reported previously. That sentence is a loaded one, one that can be interpreted as damning evidence of an administration-led conspiracy.
Don't pretend you're terribly surprised. Kings County (Brooklyn's home) is the county with the most marijuana possession arrests in the state with the most marijuana arrests, according to the ACLU. But what might surprise you is that, if you're black, you're almost ten times more likely to be busted in Brooklyn than if you're white.
The New York Times editorial board is furious. In an 1,100-word piece, the paper lashes out at the Obama administration and its allies for the reliance on secret surveillance and the useless explanations that follow. It's so remarkable, we thought it deserved something special.
Gov. Christ Christie's pick will step in to the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death of Frank Lautenberg. Don't spend too much time memorizing how to spell that tricky last name: He'll only be in the seat for the next 130 days or so. We've got a ticker to help you count.
The timing for Eric Holder's visit to Capitol Hill today was perfect. On the heels of the staggering revelation that the FBI requested — and received — authorization for the NSA to vacuum up phone records from Verizon, a Senate committee had the chance to grill him on why. That is not in the least what happened.
The National Security Agency and the FBI don't bear all the responsibility for rampant surveillance, including the NSA warrant for Verizon phone records — members of Congress do, too. We looked at votes by sitting Congressmembers on five bills critical to the existing governmental security tools. Here's how they broke out, from the Patriot Act to its extensions and beyond. With names.
If you've ever wanted to own earrings that someone else left on the New York City subway, the city has a deal you won't want to miss. Until 5 p.m. Friday, you will have the chance to bid in its weird auction, one which could give generate a cool $20,000 in revenue.
A bit of bad news for those of you hoping to play a few rounds and/or skin an animal while zipping between LGA and SFO. The TSA's plan to allow bats and small knives on flights — announced three months ago today — has been scrapped.
Darrell Issa, please come collect your scalp. It's a valuable one: The guy the IRS put in charge of implementing Obamacare has been placed on leave for taking improper gifts.
Senator Lindsey Graham needs to know what a "journalist" is. No, really, he needs to know that. He needs to know who is a member of the media and what constitutes reporting if the federal government is to give them people protection under the law. It's a question that has become only more complex.
Government investigators have figured out the source of one particular leak of classified information to the media. But that leak probably won't be the subject of the seventh Obama administration leak prosecution. The leaker was the former Secretary of Defense; the leak recipient, the makers of Zero Dark Thirty.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Wednesday is one of the first to combine assessments of the current controversies with an historic look at voters' approval of the president. In that way, it's revelatory.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who everyone expects to run for president in 2016, has proposed a bill that would amend the Constitution of the United States to prevent the government from enacting Obamacare. It will never, ever happen.
Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense under Bush, jokingly suggests in an interview that he "can't tell" if maybe President Obama now wants the terrorists to win the War on Terror. We assess how Obama can prove his loyalty.
The expenses detailed in an Inspector General's report are embarrassing, including $50,000 for videos like that Star Trek parody. But in 2011, the president signed an executive order barring such excess. Which would be close to the end of the story if it weren't for the three politically-charged letters on the report's cover: I. R. S.
Representatives of a handful of organizations targeted by the IRS appeared before the House Ways and Means Committee today at Congress' fifth hearing on the scandal, offering more anecdotes and quotes than insight into the IRS' behavior. This is where the investigation is: If you've got an interpretation of how the IRS acted badly, the president's opponents are all ears.
Bob Woodward is perhaps the country's only official validator of political scandal. For months, Republicans and sympathetic parties in the media have been enticing Woodward to apply the stamp to Obama. So far, they've had no success.
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