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Government Suggests It May Not Hide Behind “State Secrets” in Torture Lawsuit

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The government appears ready to allow a lawsuit to proceed against designers of the CIA’s torture program. Department of Justice officials have decided not to invoke state secrets privilege in a case brought by three detainees who were tortured and made the subjects of experiments while in US custody. Federal prosecutors can, with reliable success, convince judges to block litigation against government agencies if they claim sensitive information might be disclosed as a result. In this case, the DOJ has suggested that it will allow discovery…

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Obstruction Pays Off Again for Far Right; Energy Bill Passes Senate Without Flint Aid

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A sweeping energy policy bill that was once supposed to include aid for Flint, Mich. passed the upper chamber on Wednesday—sans relief. Senate Democrats, particularly Michigan’s Senate delegation, had hoped to use the Energy Policy Modernization Act, which the Senate approved in an 85-12 morning vote, to advance a $250 million measure that would have provided grants to cities facing emergency water contamination situations like Flint. They were forced to abandon those plans last week, however, following more than a month of relentless obstruction by…

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Clinton, Trump Defend Home Turf in N.Y., Sanders “Recharging”

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The presidential primaries tilted back toward the frontrunners on Tuesday night, with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump pummeling their competition in New York. The former Secretary of State beat surging Sen. Bernie Sanders 58-42 percent, breaking the democratic socialist’s momentum after a string of seven straight victories. Clinton will take the majority of N.Y.’s 247 delegates, expanding her delegate lead, which already stood at more than 200 at the start of the night. “Today you’ve proved once and again, there’s no place like home,” Clinton told a crowd…

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More Than A Thousand Prisoners Could Be Released After Latest SCOTUS “Three Strikes” Decision

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The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that its decision last year to narrow minimum sentencing “three strike” laws applies retroactively. Justices voted 7-1 to allow a Florida prisoner named Gregory Welch to challenge the length of his incarceration. An appeals court had last year denied Welch’s case three weeks before Johnson v. United States was decided by the top federal court. The move to apply the June 2015 opinion retroactively could eventually see more than 1,000 prisoners released earlier than previously expected, according to SCOTUSblog.…

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More U.S. Troops Ordered to Iraqi Front Lines

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More American soldiers are being deployed to Iraq to assist local security forces trying to retake land captured by the Islamic State (ISIL). During a trip to Iraq on Monday, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced plans to send 217 additional US troops to the country, expanding the Pentagon’s ongoing train and advise program. The latest deployments will bring the total US soldier count in Iraq to above 4,000 for the first time since 2011, when President Obama ordered a full withdrawal from the country. The new…

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Military Denies Arming anti-ISIL Militias in Afghanistan; CIA Wouldn’t Comment

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Piecemeal anti-Islamic State militias in Eastern Afghanistan aren’t being supported by the Pentagon’s primary mission in the country, a US military representative said Thursday. US Army Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland claimed that the armed groups–revealed last week by The Wall Street Journal–aren’t receiving aid from Resolute Support Mission. “As I think you know, we have a fairly strenuous process to make sure that anyone we provide support to meets a variety of conditions,” he said, via satellite link-up from Afghanistan, to the Pentagon press corps. Afghanistan’s…

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Amid Supreme Court Knockdown-Dragout, Senate Panel Advances FBI Whistleblower Protections

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Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee temporarily set aside their nasty fight over the Supreme Court vacancy to advance new protections for FBI whistleblowers. The panel unanimously approved of a bill on Thursday that would make it illegal for bureau officials to retaliate against underlings who inform them of wrongdoing. Currently, the FBI only allows personnel to make protected disclosures to oversight organs, such as the Justice Department’s inspector general, or to a select number of high-ranking officials. Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa.) and…

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Judiciary Committee Pushes Forward Stronger Email Privacy Protections

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Long-awaited reforms requiring law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before accessing emails and information stored on the cloud was affirmed by a key House panel on Wednesday. The Email Privacy Act passed the Judiciary Committee in a unanimous vote, in an ongoing initiative to update laws on computer surveillance passed during the Reagan administration. The 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) currently allows the government to read stored digital communications older than 180 days with only a court order—not a probable cause warrant. “To the investigators…

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“Merk” The Establishment: Bernie Nabs First Senate Endorsement

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In a New York Times op-ed published Wednesday morning, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) endorsed his colleague Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for President of the United States. Distinguishing himself from fellow Democrats in the Senate, who have nearly unanimously broken toward former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Merkley dismissed the notion of incremental change, and instead threw his support behind Sanders’ call for upheaval. “People know that we don’t just need better policies, we need a wholesale rethinking of how our economy and our politics work, and for whom…

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FDIC, Fed Rulings Could See Five “Too Big To Fail” Wall Street Firms Broken Up By 2018

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Federal regulators announced Wednesday morning that Dodd-Frank-mandated resolution plans of five “too big to fail” banks were “not credible,” setting in motion a process that could see them broken up in thirty months. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced that plans outlined by the quintet–Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, New York Mellon, and State Street–were inadequate. Because of the joint ruling, the firms are under pressure to revise their so-called “living wills.” The FDIC and Fed…

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Watchdog Scolds IRS For Leaving “Key Systems” Unencrypted

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Federal law enforcement authorities may deny the link between strong encryption and data security, but critical government agency overseers won’t. In a report released Tuesday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) paid out more than $3 billion in 2014 to people who fraudulently requested tax returns. The tax-processing agency was vulnerable to these claims, in part, due to weak cyber security controls, GAO concluded. “Key systems we reviewed had not been configured to encrypt sensitive user authentication data,” the watchdog reported.…

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