Undercover Cops, Rahm Aides Kept Tabs on Protesters

Mick Dumke Chicago Sun-Times
The Sun-Times previously has reported that, over the past seven years, the police have spied on anti-Olympics protesters, the Service Employees International Union, critics of the visiting Chinese premier, the Occupy movement and NATO Summit demonstrators. Following nationwide protests over the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, the police here monitored black demonstrators and kept logs of events led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other groups.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: This is the Difference Between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar The Washington Post
Trump's attempts to bully the press to silence criticism of him is anti-American. He's followed up this salvo on the First Amendment with a strike at the 14th Amendment, asserting that he’d like to deny those born in the country their citizenship. The biggest enemy to the principles of the Constitution right now is Trump. No one has to twist his words because what he says is twisted enough. He speaks fluent pretzel.

Theocracy Versus Democracy

William Greider The Nation
How the reckless Hobby Lobby decision has excited the imagination of the right wing.

Grassroots Message Against Police Violence—and All Violence—Stands Firm

Heidi Boghosian Common Dreams
The 50-foot banner on our building’s call for an end to police violence is as urgent this week as it was last week; none of the issues have changed, and the tragic murder of two New York City police officers won't—can't—slow our efforts to end violence, impunity and abuse of power by law enforcement.

Friday Nite Videos -- July 18, 2014

Portside
Spike Jonze Presents: Lil Buck and Yo-Yo Ma. If Latinos Said the Stuff White People Say. Johnny Winter: Live at the Fillmore East. Reggae Got Soul. Murder on Abortion Row.

Murder on Abortion Row

In 1994, John Salvi, a radical young Catholic abortion opponent, opened fire on two clinics in Brookline, Mass., just outside Boston, and killed two women: Shannon Lowney, a 25-year-old receptionist at Planned Parenthood, and Lee Ann Nichols, who worked as a receptionist at PreTerm, the clinic down the street.

The killings ignited a fierce debate about the intersection of free speech, abortion and religion, a debate reignited by the recent Supreme Court decision overturning a buffer space around clinics in Massachusetts. For the first time, the 1996 Frontline documentary Murder on Abortion Row is streaming online.

NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily

Glenn Greenwald The Guardian
The Government is collecting phone records for millions and millions of Americans under the PATRIOT Act. It's an outrage: The Guardian has obtained long sought-after evidence of the extent of ongoing spying on Americans under the PATRIOT Act -- and it's as bad as we'd worried. The NSA is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
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