Throughout the past weeks of revelations regarding the NSA and other agencies spying on millions of Americans, a bipartisan clique of hawks in both the Obama administration and Congress have repeatedly stated that the secret survellance practices are legal. The NSA director, General Keith Alexander, has already lied to Congress once that can be proven, without even a threat of sanction. The UK Guardian has released new documents today that show the legal justification for these survellance was so secret the former NSA director may have never actually read them.

The Guardian released the NSA Inspector General's report on the legalities of certain ongoing wiretap programs. It reveals without a doubt that as time progressed, intelligence gathering on people around the world increased, restrictions relaxed, and successive secret legal opinions normalized and regularized what was originally a secret temporary emergency measure. Federal judges and the vast majority congressional Democrats enthusiastically approved the measures without ever actually examining the legal underpinnings due to the reported success of the programs.

With the Defense of Marriage Act’s evaporation, the U.S. Supreme Court has removed a titanic obstacle in the gay rights movement. For those of us who are dedicated to the causes of equality, tolerance, and fairness under the law, this decision has cleared the path for federal legislation to legalize same-sex marriage. A minority denied access to marriage for prejudicial reasons dealing with their very nature, homosexuals in particular and the gay rights movement at large still has much to accomplish. Meanwhile, since the century’s turn, several countries around the world have already taken action to cement equality into law.**

Netherlands (2000)

In December 2000, the Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage. The Dutch parliament arguably passed the most progressive legislation in the world at the time, and primarily faced opposition from the Christian Democratic Party. More than 2,000 same-sex couples married within a mere nine months of the law’s passage. However, between 2001 and 2011, only 20% of the 55,000 same-sex couples in the Netherlands have actually married.

Belgium (2003)

America, America . . .

Certainly Edward Snowden’s crime is one of public relations. In this day and age, power ain’t just jackboots, tanks and missiles. What he did by outing the NSA and its gargantuan surveillance operation was mess hugely with the American image — the American brand — with its irresistible combination of might and right.

That’s the nature of his “treason.” The secret he gave away was pretty much the same one the little boy blurted out in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale: “The emperor has no clothes!” That is, the government’s security industry isn’t devoted, with benevolent righteousness, to protecting the American public. Instead, it’s obsessively irrational, bent on accumulating data on every phone call we make. It’s a berserk spy machine, seemingly to no sane end. How awkward.

The state of Ohio is taking centre stage in a radical and innovative response to the global financial crash of 2008, a growing national movement described by distinguished professors as "the prehistory of the next American revolution."

Cooperatives as an alternative to traditional capitalist hierarchies have a long history that dates back to the 19th century. But five years after the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the fragile seeds of economic change are beginning to take root across the country. The events following the collapse of Lehman Brothers exposed the deeply dangerous nature of finance-driven capitalism, while the government stimulus failed to 'trickle down' as expected; a new answer was needed, something that helped move away from the inherent flaws of both unfettered markets and government intervention.

By and 5-4 vote today, June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court has sanctioned the return of apartheid in nine states in our union that have a long legacy of blocking black and Latino voters.

The Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that required nine states, all but one former Confederate states, to seek pre-clearance from the U.S. Justice Department prior to changing election laws. The states are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

Blatant racist attacks on the U.S. electorate have been the deliberate strategy of the Republican Party, in particular, since its theft of the 2000 presidential election in Florida.

In 2000, the Republican Party overtly embraced old-fashioned Jim Crow tactics, targeting former felons as a pretext for stripping 90,000 poor and minority voters from the voting rolls. A majority of the illegally purged voters were African American.