The FISA Amendments Act was the brainchild of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but now, President Barack Obama is supporting the 5-year extension of the spying law. So are many Democrats in the House and Senate. Any grassroots effort to stop the renewal of the FISA Amendments Act will therefore face a steep uphill battle.

Only one senator on the Select Committee on Intelligence had the courage to vote against this unconstitutional legislation – and we can have no idea who that senator was. Though the committee thinks that it’s a good idea for the federal government to snoop inside our personal emails and listen in on our private telephone calls without a search warrant, the committee also thinks that it’s none of the public’s business to know which of the senators on the committee has voted to approve this alarming intrusion.

Bart Stupak has a history of playing political games with important policy issues, and is now facing a challenger within his own party as a result.

In the face of the Senate’s repeated on-the-record votes against data privacy, it’s an outrageous hypocrisy for senators to vote for a resolution that suggests the observance of National Data Privacy Day – a day after the actual event is over.

In March of 2009, we reviewed the congressional activity of the-members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is a coalition of liberals in the House of Representatives, one that has been characterized by the right wing as relentless in their pursuit of Red Army extremism. We found that, despite conservatives’ characterization of [...]

In the current session of Congress, Dennis Moore has earned only a 46 percent progressive rating. That relatively low rating is due mostly to a failure to support important progressive pieces of legislation.

The EFF is requesting assistance in reading the documents and considering their relevance. Please go on over and take a look at the newly released papers.

Senator Patrick Leahy insisted, even though the meeting had been previously designated as an appropriate time to deal with FISA Amendments Act reforms, that the matter would not be dealt with. So, the amendment had to be withdrawn.

At That’s My Congress, we would like to clarify a matter which may appear unimportant out of context. In context, however, the clarification demonstrates a small but consistent effort by two senators to reform surveillance laws in the direction of greater constitutional protection. In an otherwise excellent legislative analysis by Kevin Bankston of the Electronic [...]

As a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota, Al Franken refused to make any comment about the FISA Amendments Act, a bill which became law while Franken was running for election. The FISA Amendments Act(read text of the law here) legalized a massive electronic operation to spy on the personal communications of millions people [...]