Warrantless Surveillance

For all of its good intentions in 1978, FISA has since been thrust into dangerous, uncharted territory, morphing into a vehicle of unintended consequences.

Dick Cheney has spent his career not revealing himself, and in his new memoir and the ensuing PR blitz, he appears to be staying largely in character....

Under new rules, agents wouldn't have to show any "factual basis" of evidence to undertake surveillance. That's not how we do things in Montana or anywhere else in America.

How unseemly for New York Times executive editor Bill Keller to look down so disdainfully at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, with a nasty ad hominem portrayal in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

Revelations of the FBI's "COINTELPRO" prompted a national outrage that forced the Department of Justice to enact limits in 1976 curtailing the Bureau's various abuses. Today, these problems are back.

With 2010 finding our government institutions tone deaf and disengaged on addressing our mounting constitutional crises, there have been few riper times for a transpartisan political offensive.

For more than 20 years, it was settled law, born of bitter experience, that the government may not eavesdrop on people in the United States without a ...

The Justice Department is poised this week to publicly defend a little known law enforcement practice that critics say may be the "sleeper" privacy is...

Strong intelligence tools are necessary to keep us secure. But those tools must be transparent to Congress, subject to legal review from the Executive Branch, and fully consistent with the law.

Our nation's most notorious criminals violate our most fundamental laws and remain not only free, but actively engaged in influencing our national security policies.

The obsessive pursuit of information has traditionally been the mark of a regime that rules by force and sees enemies at every turn.

Dawn Johnsen is an outstanding choice to lead the Office of Legal Counsel. It is not surprising that her critics have resorted to basing their arguments on fiction.

Whether intentional or not, the talkers and bloggers who appear to be driving the post-Bush crazy train have opened up the conservative tent to some pretty unsavory and dangerous characters.

We were told the change had come. So we held up the iconic blue-and-red signs that read, "Hope." But nowadays, it's looking more like, "Meet the new Boss. Same as the old Boss."

If we move on now without fully documenting and acknowledging the betrayal of our values under the Bush administration, we cannot help but validate all that has gone on before.

Mike German was a once-politically conservative crack undercover agent who has found a new home at the ACLU, where he uses his insider knowledge to hold his former employer's feet to the fire.

I refuse to be guilt-tripped into thinking I was complicit in Gore's loss, but if I declined to vote for Obama and he lost, no matter how far right of center he leans in the coming weeks, there's no way I could shake off the blame this time.

A reasonably evenhanded biography of Barack Obama, published last year, describes him as "an exceptionally gifted politician who, throughout his ...

This was a battle the Democrats absolutely could have won. Instead, they knuckled under and granted a corrupt and authoritarian president one of his greatest victories.

Scott wonders if people are making too big a deal out of FISA: While I understand there are dozens of real policy difference to disagree with Pre...

July 8th could mark the beginning of official condoning of warrantless surveillance of law-abiding citizens in the US. I am not an alarmist and believe in qualified surveillance with process -- this is different.