Politics & Government

Fox News Insider | A voter fraud controversy is currently taking place in South Carolina after the Department of Motor vehicles discovered that 953 deceased registered voters appeared to have voted in state elections. The state’s attorney general, Alan Wilson (R), is now asking the Feds to investigate elections dating back to before the 2008 presidential election.

Associated Press | A 715-year old copy of Magna Carta will soon return to public view at the National Archives after a conservation effort removed old patches and repaired weak spots in the English declaration of human rights that inspired the United States' founding documents.

Naked Capitalism | Remember how peculiar it was that presidential candidate Mitt Romney refused to release his tax returns? That was predictably a non-starter. Most voters probably assume the reason he resisted was to avoid the controversy over his strikingly low tax rate.

Huffington Post | A Republican member of the Indiana General Assembly withdrew his bill to create a pilot program for drug testing welfare applicants Friday after one of his Democratic colleagues amended the measure to require drug testing for lawmakers.

Torrent Freak | In most reports following the MegaUpload shutdown, the site is exclusively portrayed as a piracy haven.  In a response, Pirate Parties worldwide have started to make a list of all the people affected by the raids, and they are planning to file an official complaint against the US authorities.

Russia Today | Ron Paul has long opposed the TSA and has campaigned for its abolishment for years. Following an episode on Monday that left his son, Sen. Rand Paul, stranded in a Nashville airport, the presidential hopeful is asking for help to finally end the TSA.

Salon.com | Developments in three legal cases, just from the last 24 hours, potently illuminate the Rules of American Justice. First, the Justice Department yesterday charged a former CIA agent, John Kiriakou, with four felony counts for having allegedly disclosed classified information to reporters about the CIA’s interrogation program

Tech Dirt | Reinforcing the fact that Chris Dodd really does not get what's happening, and showing just how disgustingly corrupt the MPAA relationship is with politicians, Chris Dodd went on Fox News to explicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they'd better pass Hollywood's favorite legislation... or else:

Natural News | Any normal person found guilty of stealing $40,000 from, say, a bank or an employer, would likely be sentenced to at least five years of prison. But when you work for the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA), you can expect to be given special legal treatment and sent on your way.

CNN | According to a new poll from the Pew Research Center, fewer than half of registered voters identified South Carolina as the next primary state on the road to the White House, with slightly more Republicans, at 50%, than Democrats, at 43%, offering the correct answer.

Video | CBS New Hampshire Poll results showing the candidates but one candidate is missing from the poll.

Video | Former CIA Bin Laden unit leader, Michael Scheuer, explains why he endorsed Ron Paul and why he says Rep. Paul has the strongest stance on national defense.

Video | Infowars said it best: Once again, Judge Andrew Napolitano tells us the truth. It really is amazing Fox News allows this sort of unvarnished truth to be broadcast over their propaganda venue.  "What If" segment aired on TV showing the concept of the left/right paradigm political arena in place as a control mechanism

AllGov.com | These days, special teams of TSA officials can be seen appearing randomly at the country’s train stations, bus depots and ferry launches. Twenty-five “viper” (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams have made 9,300 unannounced visits at various transportation centers around the U.S. These included testing passenger bags for explosive residue at a Greyhound station in Orlando, Florida; inspecting trucks at weigh stations in Tennessee; checking passengers of cruise ships in the Carolinas; and inspecting spectators at NASCAR races and tourists boarding ferries in North Carolina.

TheRealNews.com | Thomas Drake blew the whistle on a massive domestic information gathering scheme and was called "an enemy of the state" (speech at Sam Adams Awards) Watch full multipart Whistle Blower Threatened with 35 Years in Prison, Warns of Developing Tyranny

Extreme Tech | The battle against SOPA reached fever pitch just before Christmas when a Reddit-led boycott of Go Daddy over the domain registrar’s support for the controversial legislation led to some 37,000 domains leaving the company for greener, freedom-loving pastures. Go Daddy, meanwhile, is now buried in complaints that it’s improperly blocking domain transfer requests to rival Namecheap.

Addicting Info | Global Revolution is considered to be the most important channel covering Occupy Wall Street, broadcasting live feeds of the protests all around the world. So when protesters tell police that the world is watching as the officers beat and pepper spray innocent Americans, they mean it. So it was shocking when Global Revolution ceased their livestream of Occupy protests against the National Defense Authorization Act in New York, and switched to Occupy Maui in Hawaii.

CNN | Shortly before Christmas, Colorado became the fourth state to ask the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to reclassify marijuana as a narcotic in the same league as heavyweight painkillers including oxycodone. The governors of Washington and Rhode Island filed a formal petition with the agency in November, and Vermont signed onto that request shortly afterward.

Reddit | Reddit.com user "DrowningSink" has compiled a mega-list on the voting records of vulnerable seats in Congress. To explain how I deduced which seats were "vulnerable," I used the Cook Partisan Voting Index, or PVI.

Al Jazeera | In a statement accompanying his signature to the $662bn bill, Obama said that he was signing it despite having "serious reservations" about the provisions relating to terrorism, contending that politicians in the US congress were attempting to restrict the ability of counterterrorism officials to protect the country.

USA Today | A USA TODAY analysis of state voter registration statistics shows registered Democrats declined in 25 of the 28 states that register voters by party. Republicans dipped in 21 states, while independents increased in 18 states.

PrisonPlanet.com | Yet another TSA screener has been exposed as a pervert after police raided the Maryland home of 41-year-old TSA screener Scott Wilson and discovered videos and photos of child pornography contained on over two dozen different storage devices.

The Guardian | The US Republican candidate Michele Bachmann's Iowa campaign chairman has resigned and endorsed rival Ron Paul, six days before Iowa voters begin the nomination process to select the party's 2012 presidential nominee.

Boing Boing | TorrentFreak continues to crawl through YouHaveDownloaded, a database of IPs that have been logged by a BitTorrent-spying tool run by some folks in Russia. They've already revealed the downloading habits of the RIAA and DHS as well as the behavior detected at Nicholas Sarkozy's official residence, and now they're publishing stats on the US House of Representatives.

The Innocence Project | As the pace of DNA exonerations has grown across the country in recent years, wrongful convictions have revealed disturbing fissures and trends in our criminal justice system. Together, these cases show us how the criminal justice system is broken – and how urgently it needs to be fixed.

OpEd News | Moving quickly on Christmas Day after the US Senate voted 86 - 14 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA) which allows for the indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial, Montanans have announced the launch of recall campaigns against Senators Max Baucus and Jonathan Tester, who voted for the bill.

Washington Post | Former House speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry failed to submit enough valid signatures to qualify for the Virginia primary ballot, state GOP officials said Friday evening and early Saturday.  The Republican Party of Virginia announced early Saturday that Gingrich and Perry failed to submit 10,000 signatures of registered voters required to get their names on the ballot for the March 6 primary.

Seattle Times | A new book that was the basis of a recent "60 Minutes" investigation into congressional insider trading alleges Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, made almost $40,000 in 2005 by flipping shares in a Canadian biotech firm that stood to benefit from a massive bioterrorism-defense bill he voted for.

Before Its News | In a 2009 shocker,  Sinclair revealed in his book stunning revelations about Barack Hussein Obama, including that he had had a gay lover in Illinois. Shortly after addressing the National Press Club in Washington, DC in 2008, Sinclair revealed that Senior Advisor David Axelrod spearheaded a vindictive smear campaign against him, while Vice President Joe Biden and his son Beau arranged for his arrest after the NPC speech.

Associated Press | An Ohio third-grader who weighs more than 200 pounds has been taken from his family and placed into foster care after county social workers said his mother wasn't doing enough to control his weight.

Willamette Week | For three decades we have conducted a massive economic experiment, testing a theory known as supply-side economics. The theory goes like this: Lower tax rates will encourage more investment, which in turn will mean more jobs and greater prosperity—so much so that tax revenues will go up, despite lower rates. The late Milton Friedman, the libertarian economist who wanted to shut down public parks because he considered them socialism, promoted this strategy. Ronald Reagan embraced Friedman’s ideas and made them into policy when he was elected president in 1980.

Common Dreams | Advocates for the poor and often hungry in the US say that problems for the nation's needy could intensify if the agriculture department bows to pressure from congress to reduce food-assistance schemes.  Politicians are looking at ways to stimulate the economy and balance the federal budget with a proposed $4.2bn cut in its food-stamps program that currently assists 45 million people.

Since these petitions are ignored apart from an occasional patronizing and inane political statement amounting to nothing more than a condescending pat on the head, we the signers would enjoy having the illusion of success. Since no other outcome to this process seems possible, we demand that the White House immediately assign a junior staffer to compose a tame and vapid response to this petition, and never attempt to take any meaningful action on this or any other issue. We would also like a cookie.

CNN | "It did happen regularly, for a period of time, and I could tell, because of the pattern, that things were escalating again," Hillary Adams, now 23, said on NBC's "Today." She said she left her video camera on her dresser recording and covered its light with a scarf in order to capture the video.

Black Agenda Report | Never in living memory has a Noble Peace Prize recipient gone on to cause more death and misery than Barack Obama, who now puts hits on U.S. citizens.   His foreign policy “successes,” as rated by his supporters, all involve assassinations – he is The Assassinator. Moammar Gaddfi is a singular victim, but so are thousands of Black Libyans and migrants

National Journal Underscoring widespread discontent with all political leaders, registered voters now divide almost exactly in half on whether President Obama and the Republican majority in the House of Representatives each deserve another term in power, according to the latest United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection poll.

Forbes | Former President Teddy Roosevelt  returned to Harvard for his 30th reunion and graduation in 1910– and  as he entered the proceedings all his classmates including fellow Porcellian Club members turned their backs on him in unison. TR’s latest biographer Edmund Morris believes this shocking snub in public of a former President was due to TR’s strong belief in regulating Wall Street, breaking up monopolies and not allowing a few wealthy men run the nation.

Although the ability to submit petitions directly to the White House is a noble and welcome new feature of the current administration, the first round of responses makes blatantly clear the White House intends to just support its current stances and explain them with responses everyone who has done any research already knows.

The Hill | Ron Paul said heterosexuals in the military were "causing more trouble than the gays" in explaining his support for the repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell" during an interview with the Iowa State Daily.  Paul was arguing that heterosexual relationships in the military were equally disruptive, and, due to the larger proportion of heterosexual soldiers, more likely to occur.

Wired | The proposal, published in the Federal Registrar for comment, may codify existing practice, as the government has already lied to requesters of public records that relevant documents did not exist. Under normal practice, which seems Orwellian enough, the government may assert that it can neither confirm nor deny that relevant records exist if the matter involves national security.

Think Progress | As Republicans block his jobs plan, President Obama will announce a new campaign to create jobs without Congress. The “We can’t wait” campaign will include a series of executive-branch actions to confront housing, education, and other economic problems. He kicks it out off in Las Vegas — ground zero for home foreclosures — to announce new mortgage refinancing rules.

CBS | With recovery in the housing market tied to economic recovery, Mr. Obama will today announce what senior officials are calling a "major overhaul" of the government's underused refinance program for federally guaranteed mortgages, in order to aid homeowners having difficult refinancing their housing loan.

Daily Paul | Sanctity of Life Act of 2009 - Deems human life to exist from conception, without regard to race, sex, age, health, defect, or condition of dependency and requires that the term "person" include all such human life. Recognizes that each state has authority to protect the lives of unborn children residing in the jurisdiction of that state . Amends the federal judicial code to remove Supreme Court and district court jurisdiction to review cases arising out of any statute, ordinance, rule, regulation, or practice, or any act interpreting such a measure, on the grounds that such measure: (1) protects the rights of human persons between conception and birth; or (2) prohibits, limits, or regulates the performance of abortions or the provision of public funds, facilities, personnel, or other assistance for abortions. Makes this Act and the amendments made by this Act applicable to any case pending on, or commenced on or after, the date of enactment.

Whitehouse.gov | It was not until 1999, and the creation of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, that the separation was broken. Within those 12 years, our country has experienced a dot-com bubble and a large financial crisis. Both of these situations where created by commercial banks investing their large quantities of consumer money into speculations. I urge you, President Barack Obama, to bring back sound investment to the United States by re-instating a separation between investment banks and banking.

Wall Street Journal | GOP presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul will unveil his economic plan Monday afternoon, calling for a lower corporate tax rate, cutting spending by $1 trillion during his first year in office and eliminating five cabinet-level agencies, including the Education Department, according to excerpts released to Washington Wire.

AutoBlog | You might recall the tale of the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice being sued earlier this year for wrecking a Ferrari F50. The F50 was stolen from its owner in 2003, after which the insurance company, Motors Insurance, reimbursed the owner for the loss.

Alternet | While covering the Occupy Wall Street protests on Wednesday night, Fox 5 photographer Roy Isen was hit in the eyes by mace from a police officer and Fox 5 reporter Dick Brennan was hit by an officer's baton.  The protests on Wall Street continued to grow all day. The rallies and their participants are showing no signs of slowing down.

Business Week | Wall Street protesters arrested in a march across the Brooklyn Bridge sued New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly for allegedly violating their constitutional rights.

Politicus USA | Occupy Wall Street has grown and now Fox News is stepping up their attacks. The network of the 1% has spent multiple segments today claiming that the protesters are idiotic and don’t understand how the world works.

Institute for Justice | Imagine you own a million-dollar piece of property free and clear, but then the federal government and local law enforcement agents announce that they are going to take it from you, not compensate you one dime, and then use the money they get from selling your land to pad their budgets—all this even though you have never so much as been accused of a crime, let alone convicted of one.