Peter Scheer

The orgy of political spending that has been unleashed by super PACs in the current election cycle exceeds what a free democracy can bear. A president who is obligated to repay even a fraction of the political debts created by special interests' funding of super PACs is a president who...

In America today, conservatism's one clear fault line, cutting across cultural and socioeconomic schisms, aligns conservatives based on their views about the relationship between government and its citizens.

On one side are born-again libertarians, like supporters of perpetual presidential candidate Ron Paul. Believing that governmental power and personal freedom...

The US Justice Department announced this week that it will sue e-book publishers and Apple Computer for conspiring to raise e-book prices above the levels that Amazon, the dominant retailer for e-books, had been charging.

News reporters, responding critically to the government's charges, were quick to point out...

Nothing brings out the hypocrisy of America's political class like the high-profile blunder of one of its celebrity members. Consider, for example, Rush Limbaugh's recent Tourette's moment, in which he defamed a law school student and woman's activist as a "slut" and "prostitute" because she favors contraceptive coverage in health...

BY PETER SCHEER

Successful technology firms pride themselves on their capacity to disrupt the established order. The reference is usually to a technological advance that poses an existential threat to an entrenched industry or way of doing business. Think of Apple Computer's impact on the cellphone and music industries, Google...

Jobs died at age 56, a young man. But one of the things that stands out about him is the longevity of his superstardom. Jimmy Carter was president when Jobs first appeared on the scene as the bearded personification of high-tech cool. From the early Apple PCs to the launch...

The economic forces that pummeled every American newspaper from the New York Times to the San Francisco Chronicle have barely disturbed Rupert Murdoch's media properties. The Wall Street Journal, for one, has not only weathered the storm that decimated competitors' newsrooms, but it has added editorial staff, news features and...

Ever since WikiLeaks became a household word, traditional news media have had every reason to try to replicate its technology for receiving leaked documents, via the Internet, on an anonymous and secure basis.

Traditional media may be at war with Julian Assange and disagree fundamentally with his methods in vetting...

An inebriated John Galliano, sitting in a Paris bar, unleashes an anti-semitic rant ("I love Hitler") that is captured on a cellphone camera and posted on the internet. Within days the Dior designer is not only fired from his job, but is given a trial date to face...

The Obama administration has made no secret of its desire to unplug WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website infamous for data dumps of classified records. Of the few options available to the government, the best is one that probably hasn't been considered in this context: enacting a federal shield law.

How...

Although the anti-war movement of the 1960s has few heroes still standing, Daniel Ellsberg, the former defense analyst who leaked a secret history of the Vietnam War that became known as the Pentagon Papers, is surely one. As such, Ellsberg's full-throated support for Wikileaks, delivered as it dumped on the...

If I were Ted Olson, the former US solicitor general who is leading the legal battle against Prop 8, I would be unhappy with Jerry Brown right now.

Olson's hard-won victory before federal district court judge Vaughn Walker was meant to be the first stage of a legal strategy culminating...

The New York Times' front-page stories on the war in Afghanistan -- based on a massive leak of classified US military cables and other documents -- are not likely to change the course of the war. But they represent a sea change in the way journalists report on national security.

For public employee unions -- those representing police, firefighters, teachers, prison guards and agency workers of all kinds at the state and local level -- these are the worst of times.

Despite record high membership and dues, and years of unparalleled clout in state capitols, public sector unions find themselves...

By Peter Scheer

In the beginning there was the internet. It was raw, ungovernable and vast in its multiplicity of voices. Then came the Apple iPhone (and more recently, the iPad), offering a curated internet experience, using "apps" vetted by Apple for conformity to company standards for content and quality.

Search warrants have always been a blunt instrument for finding evidence of crime. Think of television cop shows from the 70s and 80s: A police search of an apartment for drugs was, de facto, a license to ransack all closets, cabinets and dressers. A warrant to seize a letter or...

By Peter Scheer

Forty-six years ago, the Supreme Court announced its decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, rewriting centuries of "common law" on libel and defamation, in order to boost constitutional protection for criticism of government policies and government officials. One of the most important free speech decisions in...

Google's high-stakes confrontation with China's government has entered a new, and uncertain, phase. Making good on its threat to cease censorship of search results on its China-based site, Google.cn, Google has begun redirecting users in China to its uncensored Chinese-language site based in Hong Kong, google.com.hk.

China's censors now face...

BY PETER SCHEER--As California voters begin the process of selecting the next governor of the ungovernable Golden State, the leading candidates owe them a demonstration of their commitment to government transparency.

All politicians are supportive of open-government "in principle;" the question is whether they are committed in practice. The best...

By Peter Scheer

The US government is not powerless to influence China's policies concerning censorship of the internet. This week, as Google has taken extraordinary steps--bordering on corporate civil disobedience--to challenge China's stranglehold on information, the Obama administration's response has been a study in timidity. In reality, however, the administration...