Notable House and Senate Hearings for the week of March 8-12, 2010: War on Drugs Thursday, March 11 at 10:00 AM, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing to mark up long-delayed legislation rectifying the discrepancy in sentencing for crack cocaine vs. powder cocaine possession. Elections Wednesday, March 10 at 10:00 AM, the Senate [...]

Ping. Pong. Ping. Pong. Back and forth go the volleys of favors between Chet Edwards and the utility corporation called Energy Future Holdings. It’s like watching a tennis game, minus the short white skirts. A visit to the Sunlight Foundation’s Political Party Time reveals only the latest whiffer to cross the net that separates corporations [...]

Jerrold Nadler, chair of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties in the House Judiciary Committee, has announced that his subcommittee will hold hearings into the illegal FBI spy abuses.

Overnight, news emerged that for years, the FBI grabbed Americans’ private telephone records without any search warrants, and justifying the seizures of these records by claiming that there were emergency terrorist threats that in fact never existed. Thousands of times, the FBI completely invented stories of terrorist plots to attack the United States so that [...]

The website of the House Judiciary Committee reveals that this month’s scheduled hearing, bringing FBI officials to answer questions about the bureau’s domestic surveillance of law-abiding Americans, has been canceled. The second of two hearings regarding the government’s role in preventing head injuries in football, on the other hand, will proceed as scheduled. Priorities, priorities.

When I say “legislative hearing,” you probably think of a meeting in an ornate room with formally-dressed people speaking into microphones and occasionally invoking rules of order. But these aren’t the only way in which legislation gets a hearing. Out on the street, people are speaking about legislation. Will members of Congress hear? Will members [...]

Rep. John Conyers‘ remarks on July 24, 2009 to the National Press Club concerning investigations of unconstitutional behavior by members of the Bush administration (my transcription of public NPC video): Eric Holder must appoint a special counsel to review the Bush administration abuses of power and misconduct. A criminal probe: he’s got to do that. [...]

With all the problems facing the United States of America in 2009, what has Rep. Vic Snyder of Arkansas been up to? He has introduced just one piece of legislation to the 111th Congress: a bill to commemorate the sinking of a boat on the Mississippi River back in 1865. That’s it in terms of [...]

Shell Oil has announced that it is canceling its solar and wind power projects, and going back to its 20th century energy plan – selling crude oil.

It’s plainly stupid for the American government to play hardball with people who have been mistakenly imprisoned – people who never had anything to do with terrorism in the first place. Restoring the right to habeas corpus helps our government to finally get smart, and start focusing its efforts on suspects who actually have some likelihood of being connected to terrorist conspiracies.