As an advocate of the rule of law, I have naturally supported efforts to increase government transparency. If you allow governments to act in the dark and claim secret knowledge and powers and an unfettered right to take actions based on that secret information, you have pretty much abandoned the rule of law. I have long been frustrated with how subservient the US mainstream media has been to governments, not aggressively probing and investigating but instead being satisfied with authorized leaks by high government officials who give out this information either to promote the government’s agenda or advance their own careers or both. [Read more…]

So much has happened over the last two weeks on the NSA story that it may be good to take a step back and review events, so as to not get overwhelmed. The Guardian has been the clear leader in covering this story and they have put out two useful pieces. [Read more…]

On the occasion of two major advances for same-sex marriage, let us not forget that it was exactly ten years ago today that the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Lawrence v. Texas that people had the right to have sex with others of the same sex. [Read more…]

Following the sharp pushback he received for his appalling suggestion that Glenn Greenwald should be ‘almost’ arrested (whatever that might mean) for his role in the Edward Snowden affair, Andrew Ross Sorkin issued a sort of apology, saying he ‘misspoke’. Greenwald has accepted the apology, as the recipient in such situations is always obliged to do to avoid being seen as ungracious. [Read more…]

[UPDATE: California will start issuing new marriage licenses to same-sex couples as soon as the legal paperwork to lift the injunction is completed.]

In the other same-sex marriage case Perry v. Hollingsworth, again by a 5-4 vote, the US Supreme Court ruled today that the plaintiffs did not have standing to appeal the lower court decision and so the District Court ruling that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional stands and so same-sex couples can get married in California. But it will not have wider application. The opinion can be read here. [Read more…]

Scotusblog reports that in the same-sex marriage case United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court today, by a 5-4 vote, ruled that “DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.” Anthony Kennedy wrote the opinion with Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Ginsburg joining. [Read more…]

It is of course a given that the US government must be putting all its resources into finding Edward Snowden and keeping close tables on everyone who might be even remotely associated with him. In this interview, Greenwald says [link added] that someone broke into his home in Rio and stole a laptop belonging to his partner. We do not need Sherlock Holmes to crack this case. [Read more…]

Apart from the drama surrounding the whereabouts of Edward Snowden, there have been fears that he would be the target of extreme acts to stop him revealing further information, either by kidnapping him and keeping him incommunicado or even worse, since the Obama administration has already said that they have the right to kill an American whom they think is an enemy of the state. And they clearly see Snowden as such, since they have charged him with espionage. [Read more…]

Mike Gottlieb writes that in a 5-4 verdict, the US Supreme Court today ruled that the child in the case that I wrote about on Sunday should not have been taken away from the adoptive parents. [Read more…]