Portside

NSA phone surveillance will have 'chilling effect' on ACLU'.

Changes are happening. Despite the challenges, more unionists are taking on the job of reform, pushed by the desire to save their unions and keep employers from implementing their unfettered agenda. In the process they are bucking the conventional wisdom that workers should live with less than previous generations.

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

I am genuinely puzzled as to why the Fourth Amendment is no longer taken seriously, much less literally, by any significant faction in American politics. My hypothesis is that whereas the gun manufacturers clearly make big bucks off their weird absolutist interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, there is no set of corporations that would lose billions of dollars if the government snoops into your phone records or email traffic.

Conservative Republicans in our nation’s capital have managed to accomplish something they only dreamed of when Tea Partiers streamed into Congress at the start of 2011: They’ve basically shut Congress down. Meanwhile, the nation's political work has shifted to the states, and the political division among them is widening.

The U.S. owes more than empty apologies in Central America.