Louisiana woman in dispute with neighbors says F---you with Christmas light message. Police officer says it violates city obscenity statute... which doesn't exist. ACLU helps her in court. She's harassed by neighbors and police with other petty citations.

Warrantless wiretaps intimidate several organizations and cast a chill over lawyers, journalists and human rights researchers - Are you, a US citizen, calling cousin Ivor in Budapest, or reaching out to your old pen pal Yasmeen in Sydney? The National Security Agency (NSA) can listen in on your personal cellphone or read what you might be emailing him or her from your personal computer without telling you. The Feds can listen in to you now, "whenever government deems it necessary for foreign intelligence reasons" Jaffer explained to me.

“While [Attorney General Eric Holder's] speech is a gesture towards additional transparency, it is ultimately a defense of the government’s chillingly broad claimed authority to conduct targeted killings of civilians, including American citizens, far from any battlefield without judicial review or public scrutiny.”

In the last decade, New York drastically reduced its prison population and at the same time experienced a huge drop in crime. Indiana, on the other hand, drastically increased its prison population — and consequently the burden to taxpayers — while seeing a much smaller drop in crime than the national average.

Congress is considering monumental new legislation that would grant the president–and all presidents after him–sweeping new power to make war almost anywhere and everywhere. The proposed legislation would allow a president to use military force wherever terrorism suspects are present in the world, regardless of whether there has been any harm to U.S. citizens, or any attack on the United States, or any imminent threat of an attack. The legislation is broad enough to permit a president to use military force within the United States and against American citizens.