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Politics

Rapid Rise In Super PACs Dominated By Single Donors

By Robert Faturechi/ProPublica and Jonathan Stray/Special to ProPublica

This story was co-published with the Daily Beast.
The wealthiest Americans can fly on their own jets, live in gated compounds and watch movies in their own theaters.
More of them also are walling off their political contributions from other big and small players.
A growing number of political committees known as super PACs have become instruments of single donors, according to a ProPublica analysis of federal records. During the 2014 election cycle, $113 million – 16 percent of money raised by all super PACs – went to committees dominated by one donor. That was quadruple their 2012 share.
The rise of single-donor groups is a new example of how changes in campaign finance law are giving outsized influence to a handful of funders.

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Posted on April 24, 2015

Obama Approves More Arms Sales Than Any President Since WWII

By RT America

“The numbers are astonishing. In President Obama’s first five years in office, new agreements under the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program – the largest channel for U.S. arms exports – totaled over $169 billion. After adjusting for inflation, the volume of major deals concluded by the Obama administration in its first five years exceeds the amount approved by the Bush administration in its full eight years in office by nearly $30 billion. That also means that the Obama administration has approved more arms sales than any U.S. administration since World War II.”

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Posted on April 10, 2015

Human Rights Watch Sues DEA Over Bulk Collection Of Americans’ Telephone Records

By The Electronic Frontier Foundation

Human Rights Watch, a nonpartisan organization that fights human rights abuses across the globe, filed suit against the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration late Tuesday for illegally collecting records of its telephone calls to certain foreign countries as part of yet another government bulk surveillance program. The group is represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has launched a series of legal challenges against unconstitutional government surveillance.
“The DEA’s program of untargeted and suspicionless surveillance of Americans’ international telephone call records – information about the numbers people call, and the time, date, and duration of those calls – affects millions of innocent people, yet the DEA operated the program in secret for years,” said EFF staff attorney Nate Cardozo.
“Both the First and Fourth Amendment protect Americans from this kind of overreaching surveillance. This lawsuit aims to vindicate HRW’s rights, and the rights of all Americans, to make calls overseas without being subject to government surveillance.”

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Posted on April 9, 2015

The Beachwood Radio Hour #51: Re-Electing Rahm

By Steve Rhodes

Journalism can’t compete with advertising without a strategy. Plus: Poor Phil Ponce; Rahm’s “Bs” Are B.S.; Secret Sacks; The Kris Bryant Pundit Trap; and Rahm’s Tyrannical Mandate.

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Posted on April 5, 2015

Obama Grants Clemency To 22 Prisoners This Week, But Has Denied Thousands

By Annie Waldman/ProPublica

President Obama commuted the sentences of 22 people on Tuesday, doubling the number of commutations he has granted during his administration in just one day. The decision follows a push from the Justice Department last year to grant clemency to nonviolent prisoners, many of whom had been sent to prison under the harsh sentencing laws and aggressive anti-crime policies that were originally implemented during the 1980s and 1990s.
Mark Osler, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law and the founder of the nation’s first law school clinic on federal commutations, said that the President’s action is not only historic, but also represents a commitment. “This is intended to be a message of hope,” Osler told ProPublica. “There are thousands of Americans who are going to read this and say that’s like my case or my father’s case. Now, the President has to follow through and take that seriously.”

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Posted on April 2, 2015

Buy Back Bob!

By Southside Together Organizing For Power

“On March 29th, 2015, former mayoral challenger Bob Fioretti, after years of sparring with Mayor Rahm Emanuel over closing schools and mental health clinics, did an about-face and decided to back him.
“People who went to the closed city mental health clinics felt betrayed as Alderman Fioretti had been one of the few people who championed their cause.
“But they realized, he may have just needed some of Rahm’s millions due to his campaign debt so they decided to try to raise some ‘Fund’s for Fioretti’s Friendship.’
“This video shows them attempting to deliver those funds to Alderman Fioretti as he sits down to lunch with Mayor Emanuel.
“To spare him the displeasure of dining with his (former?) nemesis, we brought what we could in order to ‘Buy Back Bob.'”

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Posted on March 30, 2015

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