A bi-partisan amendment to the Department of Defense Appropriations bill sponsored by Reps. Justin Amash (R-MI) and former House Judiciary Chair John Conyers (D-MI), was defeated late today in the U.S. House of Representatives. The measure would have brought an abrupt halt to the NSA's warrantless blanket collection of Americans' telephone records. It failed by a narrow margin of 205 to 217.

The Amash-Conyers amendment represented the first Congressional challenge to the NSA's bulk collection of domestic phone records in the wake of recent disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The vote came just one day after a speech by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), who has served on the the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee since January 2001, in which he not only warned about the unlimited scope of the NSA's ever-expanding surveillance capabilities but the unnecessary development of a secret body of laws that, he argued, threatens to eradicate the very essence of democracy and accountability.

Ironically, NSA Director General Keith Alexander, did his best to underscore Wyden's warnings. Where the Obama administration and other members of both the Senate and House Intelligence Committee publicly lobbied against Amash-Conyers, Alexander scheduled "a last-minute, members-only briefing" to lobby against the measure behind closed doors.

Alexander, whom James Bamford, author of The Shadow Factor: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, has described as "the most powerful person that's ever existed in the American intelligence community," took pains to insure that his own efforts to privately lobby against this public bill be classified as "Top Secret," thereby precluding public consideration as to the reasons why publicly-elected officials might refuse to rein in unfettered access to the telephone records of millions of law-abiding Americans.

Rather than look at today's vote as a defeat, the ACLU's Michelle Richards told The Guardian's Spencer Ackerman that the vote's narrow margin reflects "a 'sea change' in how Congress views bulk surveillance," describing the bi-partisan debate on the House floor as "a great first step."

Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who originally broke a number of the stories related to Snowden's disclosures, tweeted during the floor debate: "Edward Snowden did what he did to make everyone aware of all this, and to prompt precisely this debate. That was his motive." He also observed this irony, after the House Democratic leadership rallied against the amendment and the measure ultimately went down to narrow defeat: "A majority of Dems supported the Amash/Conyers amendment to defund NSA bulk spying - majority of GOP joined [with the White House]."

UPDATE 7/25/13: According to AP today, Congressional "Opponents of the National Security Agency's collection of hundreds of millions of Americans' phone records insist they will press ahead with their challenge to the surveillance program after a narrow defeat in the House"...

"If we do not seize this unique moment in our constitutional history to reform our surveillance laws and practices, we are all going to live to regret it," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) warned during a lengthy but powerful speech before the Center for American Progress on Tuesday.

In his remarks, Wyden, who has served on the Senate Intelligence Committee since January 2001, left no room for anyone to doubt the liberating impact of the recent revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. For years, Wyden said, he had wanted to expose the extent to which the Executive Branch of our government and the leaders of the "intelligence community" had deceived the public about the NSA's domestic surveillance programs, but, due to Senate's rules in regard to classified material, he was "not even allowed to tap the truth out in Morse code."

That roadblock has been removed. "The disclosures by an NSA contractor lit the surveillance world on fire," Wyden told the assembled students, journalists and policy wonks yesterday. "Several provisions of secret law that were secret were no longer secret, and the American people were finally able to see some of the things we [he and Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO)] had been raising the alarm about for years."

That alarm centered not only on the unprecedented extent of the NSA's still-expanding, domestic surveillance capabilities but also, as he explained, on the unnecessary and dangerous, post-9/11 development of a secret system of laws that threatens to eradicate the very essence of democracy and accountability.

These provisions, he warned, allow "the Executive to secretly follow a secret interpretation of the law under the supervision of a secret, non-adversarial court and occasional secret Congressional hearings"...

I've always wondered why non-Rightwing Christians have allowed Rightwingers to take "God" and "Jesus" as their own, particularly since progressive principles are far more in line with those said to be the teachings of Jesus.

The folks in North Carolina --- who are now under siege by Republican control of both congressional houses and the governorship for the first time in 150 years --- have been going about reclaiming the moral high ground with a series of massive (and growing larger) "Moral Monday" protests at the state house, so far resulting in about 900 arrests for civil disobedience as of this week's twelfth consecutive Monday protest.

The protests are being held by a wide coalition of groups in response to the radical Republican legislation --- much of it written out of state by the Koch-funded corporatist lobby, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) --- meant to see the state government shut down women's health clinics, cut education funding and, of particular note, suppress voters by truncating early voting, ending Sunday voting, banning NC's successful Election Day registration program, instituting tax penalties to parents whose children vote at their college residences, and by putting in place draconian polling place Photo ID restrictions. (See Ari Berman today at The Nation for more on the NC Republican's attempt to institute all of these "extreme voter suppression measures".)

At Salon, Kristin Rawls explains that the "Moral Monday" protests in NC, "that include support for LGBT and abortion rights", seem to be "confounding to the Tea Party", but not to the many groups of faith (as well as "atheists, agnostics and members of other faiths in attendance every week") who are finally taking back the moral high ground from the Rightwing hypocrites who have claimed it, but never earned it, for so much of the past decade.

It's an interesting read, and an interesting phenomenon that, Rawls notes, "is supported by a 150-organization coalition spearheaded by the NC-NAACP that includes everything from Occupy Raleigh to Planned Parenthood-NC to the NC Association of Educators."

Her point about why the voter suppression laws Republicans are now trying to pass are so important for the NC GOP radicals, is explained in this key passage...

On today's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles, we covered the facts concerning the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman verdict and the protests here in L.A. big time.

In particular, we detailed the lies told by L.A.'s NBC4 and the LAPD about the weekend's peaceful protests, as well as the laudatory behavior of at least one very good cop on the force (LAPD's Capt. Cory Palka, in case you're wondering) who deserves a big-time promotion, in my opinion.

We also had time for a lot of calls from around L.A., South Central, Crenshaw District and beyond as folks (including myself) had plenty to say about it all. We tossed in a bit of NSA, James Comey and the horrendous Glenn Beck to boot. So, enjoy!...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

Last night we detailed irresponsible behavior and reporting by the LAPD and Los Angeles' NBC affiliate in regard to false reports of "$15,000 worth of damage" said caused by Trayvon Martin protesters who, the reporter claimed, had "stormed" a hotel in Hollywood on Sunday night.

As we reported exclusively last night, two spokespersons from the hotel in question disputed the LAPD/NBC4 reports to The BRAD BLOG, describing them as "false." Moreover, video --- even the video shown by NBC4 --- available from a day of largely peaceful protests the day after the George Zimmerman "not guilty" verdict was announced in Florida, seems to have revealed violence that day only by baton-wielding police, who also fired rubber bullets at demonstrators at various points throughout the day.

While the behavior of corporate media and police in the instances described last night was reprehensible and dangerous, at the same time it's also worth highlighting some of the responsible behavior by the LAPD that night, particularly after a very long day of protests which cropped up throughout the day and night at various locations across the city.

One such moment very much worth highlighting occurred at the height of Sunday's protests in Hollywood, not long after midnight, just in front of the CNN building on Sunset Blvd. NBC4's NewsChopper4 reporter Megan Reyes (who, as we discussed in the previous article, had falsely reported "rowdy behavior" by protesters "breaking glass" at the W Hotel in Hollywood, among other misinformation), described this particular group of 50 or so protesters in Hollywood as "the largest pocket of protesters in the city" at that point.

What she could not report on from several thousand feet in the air, however, was what was actually going on on the ground, as captured by video web-streamer "PMbeers". The live, on-the-ground reporting by the live web-streamer revealed not only peaceful, organized discussion of planning for next steps by demonstrators and their hopes of meeting with public officials in coming days, but an absolutely fascinating moment captured on video (see below) when LAPD Captain Cory Palka addressed the group of protesters directly, respectfully and peacefully...

[This article now cross-published by Salon...]

Despite reporting to the contrary from both Los Angeles' NBC affiliate and the Los Angeles Police Department, Trayvon Martin protesters in Hollywood on Sunday night neither "stormed" nor caused "about $15,000 worth of damage" at a local hotel.

For the most part, protests in the wake of the "not guilty" verdict for George Zimmerman in Florida, have been peaceful here in L.A., though, at times, it seems as if NBC's local affiliate, NBC4 hoped they might not be.

The BRAD BLOG has confirmed with a spokesman at the W Hotel in Hollywood that "no protestors ever entered" the facility, even as NBC4's NewsChopper4 reporter Megan Reyes told both the studio and viewers watching their live web stream of protests on Sunday night that protesters were "getting very rowdy" and had "broken glass" at the hotel. She cited no source for her reporting, and NBC4 did not respond to The BRAD BLOG's request last night via Twitter for details on Reyes' sourcing.

By Monday on NBC4, false reports of "broken glass" had turned into false reports of "$15,000 worth of damage" at the hotel, after reporter Tony Guinyard informed viewers that protesters "stormed" the hotel and, as an LAPD Commander, on camera, confirmed that report.

All of that, however, was completely disputed by two W Hotel officials we contacted on Monday...

Amidst the understandable sound and fury of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decisions on marriage equality and their activist zeal to gut the Voting Rights Act in their determination to legislate from the bench that which is specifically mandated by the Constitution to be legislated by Congress, a number of their other end-of-term decisions managed to fly largely beneath the radar.

One of those decisions came late last month when the five right-wing members of the Court ruled that citizens who are severely injured, maimed or even killed by FDA-approved --- but unreasonably dangerous --- generic prescription drugs, have no right to seek compensation from the giant pharmaceutical companies which manufacture and market them to unsuspecting consumers.

In its 5-4 decision in Mutual Pharmaceutical Co., Inc. vs. Bartlett [PDF] ("Bartlett"), the Court annulled a $21 million judgment that had been awarded to New Hampshire resident Karen L. Bartlett. Her use of the generic drug, Sulindac, in 2004, produced catastrophic injuries when she suffered an acute toxic necrolysis (aka Stevens-Johnson Syndrome).

In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito described her injuries as "tragic" and acknowledged that over 65% of Bartlett's body "was burned off, or turned into an open wound. She spent months in a medically induced coma, underwent 12 eye surgeries, and was tube fed for a year. She is now severely disfigured"¦and is nearly blind."

For Alito, and the rest of the Court's right-wing majority, the severity of Bartlett's injury proved inconsequential when measured against Big Pharma's bottom line and their interest in selling generic drugs, which account for 75% of the prescription drugs sold in the U.S.

As a result, as it applies to generics, for the first time in our nation's history, FDA permission to market has been treated as a final stamp of approval as to the generic drug's safety, irrespective of the scope of subsequently obtained scientific evidence that reveals otherwise.

Anyone who is now injured, maimed or killed by what turn out to be generic, poison pills are S.O.L....

Here's our own Desi Doyen (of The BRAD BLOG's Green News Report) on this week's The Point, The Young Turks' panel show, along with Dave Rubin, Kelly Carlin & Anna Kasparian, talking about rapper Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) getting force-fed in solidarity with the Gitmo prisoners who have been on hunger strike protesting their captivity for months...

The force-feeding being carried out on the Gitmo prisoners is a human rights abuse decried as torture by organizations such as the Red Cross, the United Nations and the World Medical Association.

It's all the more outrageous considering that more than 80 of the prisoners currently on hunger strike --- and being force fed through a tube in their nose for months --- have been cleared for release years ago by the U.S. government.

Yet, they still sit today, for years on end, as prisoners, never to face charges and with little hope of being released any time in the near future. That, despite President Obama's claims that he wants to close Gitmo and, most importantly, the fact that he has the power and ability to send all of the cleared prisoners home tomorrow, with little more than a stroke of his pen.

And, by the way, the very popular Rightwing Republican hypocrite and idiot Glenn Beck is so clueless that he either doesn't know the above, or simply doesn't care. Instead of calling for these people to be treated humanely or have their rights and freedom (which he pretends to care about) restored, last week he made fun of them and expressed his preference that the U.S. government should just "shoot them in the head".

Remember that, please, the next time the con-man Beck attempts to hoodwink you or anybody else into believing that he gives a tinker's damn about "Big Government" tyranny, freedom, individual rights or anything other than disinforming America in order to line his own pockets with the hard-earned cash of his gullible, easily-conned fellow citizens.

I have been unable to find any evidence that even one single primetime program at cable news channel MSNBC --- which bills itself as "The Place for Politics" --- spent even one minute of coverage on this week's 3-hour oversight hearing in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for President Barack Obama's nominee to be the next Director of the FBI.

The current Director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, was appointed by George W. Bush, and has served in that position since the week prior to 9/11/2001. During his tenure, there has been a vast, radical expansion of the use of torture, indefinite detention, and massive foreign and domestic surveillance by the U.S. Government. While the term for an FBI Director is ten years, Mueller has served almost twelve, following a two-year extension requested by Obama and authorized by the Senate --- which is responsible for advice, consent and confirmation of FBI Director nominees --- in 2011.

James Comey, Jr., who served as U.S. Deputy Attorney General during the George W. Bush administration, after having served as one of Bush's U.S. Attorneys, has been nominated by Obama to become the next Director of the FBI. He will, in theory, serve ten years if confirmed by the U.S. Senate and will be the first FBI Director appointed after 9/11.

According to the FBI's website, the Director oversees "56 field offices located in major cities throughout the U.S., approximately 380 smaller...resident agencies in cities and towns across the nation, and more than 60 international offices called 'legal attachés' in U.S. embassies worldwide." The Bureau employees almost 36,000 people and has an annual budget of just over $8 billion.

Even without the ongoing national (and international) debates about the U.S. use of torture, indefinite detention and its massive worldwide and domestic surveillance policies in the wake of disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, it seems the oversight hearings for any new FBI Director, which, in this case, would be only the 7th in its history, would be newsworthy.

Given the importance of the role and the enormity of the appointment, especially at this moment in history, the fact that the entirety of MSNBC's primetime line-up seems to have completely ignored those hearings entirely, seems newsworthy as well.

All of that even more so, given the man who was nominated for the job and the extraordinary content of the hearings...

On this week's KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast, it was great to be joined again by former FBI Special Agent, 9/11 whistleblower, TIME's 2002 Person of the Year (and even BRAD BLOG guest blogger) Coleen Rowley.

Rowley filed an op-ed in the New York Times this week with 15 questions for U.S. Senators to ask FBI Director nominee James Comey before deciding to confirm him. Naturally, they asked almost none of them during his oversight hearing on Tuesday, choosing to laud him, for the most part, for his willingness to stand up to Bush and Cheney, one very famous night in 2004, while ignoring the fact that, as the ACLU's Laura Murphy describes it: "Comey...also approved or defended some of the worst abuses of the Bush administration during his time as deputy attorney general. Those included torture, warrantless wiretapping, and indefinite detention."

As a 24-year FBI veteran, suffice to say, Rowley did not seem impressed with Comey's often contradictory answers --- particularly on mass surveillance and torture --- in the few instances that he was asked tough questions by the Committee. Her insight here is important and very helpful, particularly as the hearing was, incredibly, almost completely ignored by the corporate media entirely.

We also discussed Edward Snowden and the award that her group, Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, an organization of former national security officials, honored the NSA whistleblower with this week, "praising his decision to reveal the extent of U.S. government electronic surveillance of people in the United States and around the world."

After Rowley, we covered the still non-existent "Zombie Voters" in South Carolina; the woman hauled away by cops during her testimony for offering her opinions on the radical anti-abortion bill in the Texas legislature; the student journalists who held NSA recruiters feet to the fire at the University of Wisconsin; and, of course, Desi Doyen joined us for the latest Green News Report. Enjoy!

Download MP3 or listen online below...

Along the lines of citizens speaking up for themselves, as we heard in the audio posted earlier today of University of Wisconsin students peppering NSA recruiters on campus with some very tough questions...Here's a woman who was offering her thoughts to a Texas state legislative committee yesterday about their radical new anti-abortion bill they are trying to slam down Democrats' and citizens' throats.

The woman's comments, apparently, became no longer to the liking of the committee chair at some point, and so she was ordered hauled away by the cops.

If they had to take such extreme measures to avoid hearing this woman offer her opinion for a couple of minutes, after she waited her turn in line to do so, as per the rules, I guess she must be worth listening to. So, here ya go...

Good thing she wasn't a "Tea Partier". We'd be at war by now.

[Hat-tip TPM]

Before their recess for the July 4th holiday, the U.S. House rejected what has, for decades, been largely a no-brainer for the United States Congress: the federal farm subsidies bill.

This year, however, with a Congress as dysfunctional as it has ever been, even that legislative "gimme" has been stymied, for now, by the far Right Republican caucus hoping to slash even more of the food stamp benefits included the bill, and by progressive Democrats furious about cuts to the federal food assistance program that the GOP-controlled House already managed to write into it.

Before the break, the bill was defeated by a 195 to 234 vote margin in what served as a humiliating embarrassment for House Speaker John Boehner. But the $939 billion bill --- which includes both subsidies to farmers (mostly to "Big Ag") and federal food stamp program appropriations --- will soon be coming back, whether Boehner likes it or not.

And, before its return, the hypocrisy embedded in the "Tea Party" caucus' opposition to the bill needs to be highlighted. That hypocrisy is almost certainly best exemplified by one Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-TN).

Even the ordinarily staid New York Times was taken aback by the level of Fincher's hypocrisy that emerged when he quoted the Bible as justification for slashing food stamp benefits for the poor. He claims that assistance, somehow, amount to theft.

But the facts of Fincher's argument are even more embarrassing than that. The Times notes that Fincher himself has "collected nearly $3.5 million in subsidies from 1999 to 2012" in federal support for his 3,000 acre family farm.

"In 2012 alone, the data shows, Mr. Fincher received about $70,000 in direct payments, money that is given to farmers and farmland owners, even if they do not grow crops."

Even more remarkably, his argument in favor of cutting $20 billion in food stamps came during a debate over the bill in a U.S. House sub-committee which voted to increase subsidies to farmers by $9 billion in the wake of last year's record drought. That, of course, was before the reality of his own reliance on federal funding for his family farm was brought to light by the media...

"The TPP is nicknamed 'NAFTA on steroids.'", Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) wrote in a recent email to supporters, explaining what he saw after being allowed to review some of the text of the new, extremely broad, and very classified trade agreement being hammered out behind close doors. "Now that I've read it, I can see why," he added.

His email suggests just how far down the secrecy rabbit hole our nation has traveled, not just in our massive classified surveillance state, parts of which are presently being revealed by former NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden, but even in our so-called "free trade agreements" being negotiated, supposedly, on our behalf.

As Grayson warned after reviewing part of the new agreement last month: "There is no national security purpose in keeping this text secret...This agreement hands the sovereignty of our country over to corporate interests"...

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with these people?! Via TPM...

Once again, in case this is still not clear to opponents of marriage equality: Just because same-sex marriage is now allowed in CA, it is not now, nor will it ever be mandatory here, or anywhere else. So you're cool.

Two additional things strike me in regard to the above, at the moment. 1) The group trying to block gay couples who love each other from marrying each other in California is from Arizona?! 2) Their organization is called "Alliance Defending Freedom"?! Really? Proving once again that irony is not just merely dead, it's really most sincerely dead.

UPDATE: Justice Kennedy, who sided with the Supreme Court majority decision that allowed marriage equality to return to CA this week, rejects the Alliance Hating Freedom's request "with no additional comment", according to AP. But the Prop 8 supporters say they plan to "continue their efforts to halt gay marriage by filing their request with another Supreme Court justice."

"Some countries are willing to stand up to the United States right now," Michael Ratner told Amy Goodman earlier this week, as he heaped praise upon Ecuador, the nation which previously granted political asylum to Ratner's client, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Ecuador has defied the U.S. by saying it will consider NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's request for political asylum.

It is likely that Ecuador is already furnishing Snowden with some level of diplomatic protection. AP reports that, according to WikiLeaks, Snowden was being "escorted by diplomats and legal advisers" during his travels from Hong Kong to Russia last weekend. It seems likely that Snowden was met at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport by Ecuadorian diplomats. A black BMW with diplomatic license plates assigned to the Ecuadorian Embassy was reportedly, waiting at the airport last Sunday in advance of Snowden's arrival.

Ecuador is not the only nation that is unwilling to cooperate, for differing reasons, with an apparently vengeful U.S. government which has sought to make an example of Snowden by charging him with espionage. Some, like Hong Kong, have a longstanding commitment to free speech and the right to due process. Others, like Russia, have an interest in closer political and economic ties to the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) --- a group of socialist and social democratic Latin American and Caribbean nations that includes three potential Snowden destinations, Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador.

In all cases, there appears to be a growing revulsion towards the overreach of the NSA's increasingly privatized, "Big Brother"-like intrusions and a growing recognition that the United States has long-since abandoned its mantle as a beacon of democracy and a nation devoted to "equal justice under the law"...