By Last Week Tonight
“The U.S. Senate Torture Report revealed horrifying details of America’s interrogation program. Helen Mirren will fill you in.”
Posted on June 22, 2015
The Reality Of Bail
By Last Week Tonight
John Oliver explains why America’s bail system is better for the reality TV industry than it is for the justice system.
Posted on June 9, 2015
Obama Secretly Expanded NSA Spying To Internet
By Julia Angwin and Jeff Larson/ProPublica, Charlie Savage/New York Times, and Henrik Moltke/Special to ProPublica
This story was co-published with the New York Times.
Without public notice or debate, the Obama administration has expanded the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international Internet traffic to search for evidence of malicious computer hacking, according to classified NSA documents.
In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad – including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the documents show.
The Justice Department allowed the agency to monitor only addresses and “cybersignatures” – patterns associated with computer intrusions – that it could tie to foreign governments. But the documents also note that the NSA sought to target hackers even when it could not establish any links to foreign powers.
Posted on June 4, 2015
Obama Worst FOIA President Ever
By Human Rights Watch
On May 20, 2015, Human Rights Watch sent this letter to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for its hearing “Ensuring Transparency through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA),” on June 2, 2015, to detail the many recent problems we’ve encountered attempting to use FOIA in our research gathering.
May 20, 2015
The Honorable Jason Chaffetz, Chairman
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
United States House of Representatives
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Elijah Cummings, Ranking Member
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
United States House of Representatives
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
RE: Freedom of Information Act requests by Human Rights Watch
Dear Chairman Chaffetz and Ranking Member Cummings,
The US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a critical instrument to ensure accountable government and make effective the American people’s right to know information of public interest. At Human Rights Watch, we rely on the law as an essential tool to help document potential rights abuses by US agencies, as we did in our reports on the use of far and frequent detention transfers within the immigration system and the impact of US border prosecutions. However, as the Oversight Committee is aware, we are witnessing what the Associated Press has recently described as a procedural and substantive breakdown of the system. Our own recent experience using FOIA is unfortunately consistent with the Associated Press’s accounts of government agencies denying requests, delaying responses, charging exorbitant fees, censoring responses and generally obfuscating records requests at unprecedented levels.
Posted on June 3, 2015
The Beachwood Radio Hour #59: Trains, Trails, Rivers & Riot Fest
By Steve Rhodes
The Riverwalk Is (Sort Of) Open; The 606 Is (Finally) Here; Rahm’s Flyover; Pat Quinn’s Blue Ribbon Recommendations Are (Sadly) Dead, Dead, Dead; Riot Fest Got Screwed; and Confession: Maggie Daley Park Is Really Cool.
Posted on May 30, 2015
The Beachwood Radio Hour #58: The Gunner’s Dream
By Steve Rhodes
We cannot just write off his final scene. Plus: Scanner Stenography; Twitter Tallies; Big Media’s Super PAC Love; CPS Is A Rogue Nation; and American Cannot Stand The Light Of Day.
Posted on May 26, 2015
Know Your Rights!
By First Defense Legal Aid
Englewood, Lawndale Know Your Rights Campaign Vows to Deliver 100 “What to do When Stopped by Police” Workshops by June 30 to Reduce Violence, Police Overreach
Who: First Defense Legal Aid is the only way people in Chicago police custody might access free legal defense 24/7 if someone alerts their pro-bono, on-call lawyers at 1(800) LAW-REP-4.
To promote the hotline and educate Chicagoans about the power of using their rights for a more equitable, accountable, and fair system, FDLA prepares and supports people in disproportionately policed communities to act as peer educators, giving know your rights workshops, conducting street outreach, and canvassing with posters in neighborhood business districts.
Posted on May 24, 2015
The Beachwood Radio Hour #57: Chicago Teeters On A Fulcrum!
By Steve Rhodes
And Rahm Emanuel is our only hope. Plus: Cub Fan Gonna Cub Fan; When David Letterman Lost The Plot; Daddy Chance The Streets & San Super; Secret Hospitals Of The 1%; and Bruce Rauner’s Vegas Government.
Posted on May 21, 2015
Bruce Rauner’s Secret Government
By Steve Rhodes
“When running for office, future Gov. Bruce Rauner regularly pledged to bring unprecedented transparency to state government as part of the Republican’s campaign to turn around the Illinois economy,” AP reports.
Let me guess: He’s not transparent at all!
*
This is a worthy story, but AP is drawing a contrast between campaign pledges and governing reality instead of drawing a line from dishonest campaigning to dishonest governing. Rauner showed us who he was during a campaign filled with repeated lies, flip flops and evasions.
Rauner hid the ball during the campaign just as he’s doing now.
Posted on May 18, 2015
‘Incommunicado’ Forever: Gitmo Detainee’s Case Stalled For 2,477 Days And Counting
By Raymond Bonner/Special to ProPublica
This story was co-published with Politico.
Since being seized in a raid in Pakistan in 2002, Abu Zubaydah has had his life controlled by American officials, first at secret sites, where he was tortured, and since 2006 in a small cell in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
And, thanks to one of the strangest, and perhaps most troubling, legal cases to grow out of the War on Terror, it appears he’s not going to be leaving anytime soon – which was exactly the plan the CIA always wanted. Not even his lawyers understand what’s transpired behind closed doors in a Washington, D.C., courtroom.
Posted on May 14, 2015