The Know-Nothing President
Last week, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein, announced that President Obama didn’t know the United States was collecting communications data of allied leaders. In…
Syria, the NSA, Obamacare, and Impeachment
In every one of these situations: the push to attack Syria, the NSA spying on citizens, funding and implementation of Obamacare; proponents want to allow the government to do something…
In the Name of National Security
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. -C.S. Lewis News breaks this morning that the NSA has the ability…
Dusting Off the Third Amendment: A Creative Response to Domestic Spying
Fourth Amendment arguments against the NSA surveillance programs are plentiful these days. The general perception by the public, and numerous government officials, is that warrantless surveillance and data mining is…
Starve the Bureaucratic Beast: Support A Pure Leahy-Lee Amendment
The last time legislators updated the Electronic Communication Privacy Act (ECPA) was when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was a toddler. With new technological innovation and new privacy concerns, Congress must…
Maximum Liberty or Temporary Security? Justin Amash and the NSA Amendment.
Yesterday afternoon a bold, potentially groundbreaking amendment to a defense appropriations bill was narrowly defeated. The amendment sponsored by Representative Justin Amash sought to curtail…
See How Your Representative Voted on the Amash Amendment
Tonight the House voted on Justin Amash's amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill. The amendment would simply have required that the NSA's surveillance and collection of digital metadata only be…
High-tech NSA Claims It Can’t Search Its Own Emails
You remember the NSA, right? Big, shadowy agency recording everything you say, write or do online or on your phone? It was in all the papers about…
House to Vote on Fourth Amendment Today; Outcome in Doubt
The House is expected to vote today on the Fourth Amendment. The outcome is in doubt. How far we've drifted from the letter of the Constitution and the spirit of…
Oregon – Not As Liberal As You Might Think
Many outside Oregon have written off the state as a perennial loss for conservatives, owing to its deep blue liberal reputation. This reputation is brilliantly depicted in the IFC show…