"These (hearings) are, in fact, designed to be window dressings," Carl Messineo, legal director for the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, said Friday.

What Snowden leaked were critical documents shining a bright light on creeping corporate fascism that facilitates illegal spying on law abiding American citizens and our closest European allies.

Since the 2008 economic crash, security agencies have increasingly spied on political activists, especially environmental groups, on behalf of corporate interests.

An obviously unhappy Judge Edward Korman has approved the Obama administration's proposal to make just one formulation of the morning-after birth control pill available over the counter without age restrictions.

From the New York Times

Last evening, The Guardian newspaper published a document classified by the U.S. government as Top Secret, revealing that the Obama administration is engaged in a domestic surveillance program involving the phone records of tens of millions of Americans.

The Oregon Terrorism Information Threat Assessment Network is one of several Federal Fusion Centers spread across 77 U.S. cities that collaborate with local law-enforcement agencies on suspected terrorist threats.

A federal judge on Friday refused to significantly delay his order that the morning-after emergency contraception pill be made widely available to women and girls regardless of their age.

A federal judge on Friday stepped up his criticism of the Obama administration, accusing the Justice Department of making “frivolous” and “silly” arguments in its attempt to delay making the morning-after emergency contraceptive pill available to women and girls of all ages without a prescription.

A government appeal of a ruling giving women of all ages broad access to morning-after birth control is frivolous, a federal judge said Friday as he refused to suspend enforcement of his decision pending appeal.