News & Commentary

Friday was a slow news day in DC.

The government is continuing to fight on various fronts to keep its torture program secret. It's not going to win.

It's an old tradition that a year after a couple's wedding, they eat a slice of their wedding cake.

It's often said that people should be judged by their actions, not merely their words. The same is true of institutions, even the Department of Defense (DoD).

After he returned from Iraq both homeless and out of work, Stephan Papa spent one night in a drunken misadventure. Convicted of destruction of property and resisting arrest, Mr. Papa was sentenced to pay $2600 in fines and court fees.

When faced with government brutality and, in its aftermath, a total lack of justice for victims we have two choices: we can despair, or we can fight back.

There’s a lot the Senate can and should do to improve upon the version of the USA Freedom Act passed by the House of Representatives last week. (My colleague Gabe Rottman outlines some of the most necessary changes here.) That includes one of the most troubling aspects of the agency’s phone-records program: the shadow database of Americans’ phone records, otherwise known as the “corporate store.” Trouble is, the bill’s language, as passed out of the House, makes it impossible to know whether the provision would actually add urgently needed privacy protections.

“In the nearly two decades since the Commission first began to examine data brokers, little progress has been made to improve transparency and choice.”
     - Conclusion, Federal Trade Commission Report, A Call for Transparency and Accountability

The New York Times reported this Sunday that one national employer relied on the labor of more than 60,000 immigrant workers last year to cook, clean, and do laundry while living behind locked doors and barbed wire. The employer paid them only $1 per day – or in some cases, compensated them with nothing more than soda and candy bars.  In one facility, people who organized a work stoppage and hunger strike were thrown into solitary confinement.