The back-to-back revelations this week that the government has been working with internet and telecommunications companies to sweep up everyone’s phone records and also to tap into the servers of internet providers, has provided startling confirmation of long-held suspicions that we now have an out-of-control national security state that does not give a damn about the constitution or individual right but will use, under the guise of the bogus war on terror, any of the extremely powerful weapons at its disposal to achieve whatever it thinks it wants or needs. We have allowed the creation of a national security behemoth and that behemoth is turning on us, as such behemoths always do. Both political parties are complicit in this, as are members of congress, the judiciary, the military, and major corporations. [Read more…]

[Update: Jesselyn Radack, who has vigorously defended the cause of whistleblowers, pans this documentary as shallow and biased.]

[Update2: Danny Schecter also blasts the film and provides important information on the unusual government-corporate backing that it got that may explain its apparent negatives of Assange, Manning, and WikiLeaks. (Thanks to Pierce R. Butler in the comments.)]

Academy award winning documentarian Alex Gibney has released a new one We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks. The film’s website is here and here’s the trailer. [Read more…]

Someone has leaked to Glenn Greenwald a secret court order that shows that the Obama administration has obtained from Verizon detailed records of all its customers. The suspicions are that the government has obtained similar records from other phone companies as well. [Read more…]

As regular readers know, I have long been a great admirer of the work that Glenn Greenwald does. In a recent essay he discusses reader-funded journalism which he thinks is the way that quality news will be generated in the future, because it will enable writers to free themselves from the clutches of big corporate media entities and thus not be confined by their boundaries of what constitutes ‘acceptable’ journalism or commentary. It is an interesting take, worth reading for those who care about ensuring quality news media.

He also mentions his annual fundraiser to help support his work and I urge those who believe in this type of journalism to contribute here.

Yesterday was the second day of the Bradley Manning trial. Nathan Fuller of the Bradley Manning Support Network is summarizing the proceedings day by day (day 1 and day 2) and the transcripts can be seen here. [Read more…]

Following Mitt Romney’s defeat in the 2012 presidential election and other setbacks to their hopes for gaining ground in the Senate and House of Representatives, the Republican party has commissioned studies to see how to gain ground with young, female, and minority voters. The results should not be that surprising, since the party’s problems with these demographics were fairly obvious. [Read more…]

I am sure many saw the news reports of the Pew survey that found that “a record 40% of all households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who are either the sole or primary source of income for the family.” This was up from just 11% in 1960. [Read more…]

It appears that despite the Obama administration’s attempts at keeping the trial as opaque as possible by, among other things, not granting press passes to two crowd-funded court stenographers so that media outlets they can create their own transcripts of the proceedings since the government won’t release its own, a small window has opened. Some media outlets have given the stenographers their own passes and the judge and the prosecutor have said that they won’t oppose having them in the courtroom. [Read more…]