Ten reports have gone missing. Under a federal law passed in 2008, President Barack Obama is required to nominate members of a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), an independent office in the executive branch of the U.S. Government. Fusion Center administrators and information sharing specialists are required by law to take civil liberties [...]

This morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Fair Elections Now Act, legislation that would establish a public-funding system for congressional elections to counterbalance the corrupting influence of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

House of Representatives: Homeland Security Committee, Thursday March 31, 10 AM: A hearing on US involvement in the drug war in Mexico, with updates on drug-related violence in Mexico. Judiciary Committee, Wednesday March 30, 10 AM: The Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee will be holding a hearing on the permanent surveillance provisions of the [...]

On March 7, the Senate Judiciary Committee will be traveling to Colchester, Vermont for a special hearing entitled “Strategies to Protect and Promote Vermont Brands.” How does this state-level business marketing question fall under the jurisdiction of the national-level Judiciary Committee? Will judges be tasked with the milking of cows or the tapping of maple [...]

“This lack of transparency speaks to a larger problem where the Speaker’s office has the capacity to unilaterally draft a bill and send it straight through to the Rules Committee. Woodrow Wilson once said that ‘Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, while Congress in its committee rooms is Congress at work.’ If Wilson [...]

“Please understand, Members, that this extension is not the final word on the PATRIOT Act , and what we will do is use the time between now and the year that will elapse to improve and pass real reform. Now, while I would prefer to do this now, it is not to me strategically wise [...]

Barack Obama has not just passively failed to end religious discrimination in federally-funded employment. Obama has actively blocked efforts to end the religious discrimination.

On the morning of January 20 2010, Senator Patrick Leahy reacted to the Inspector General’s confirmation that the FBI had illegally obtained Americans’ phone records under false pretenses by telling stories about threats of terrorist attack that did not exist. His words: Senator Patrick Leahy: This morning, the Inspector General released a report a few [...]

Representative Jerrold Nadler, Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee in the House of Representatives, took to the floor of the House of Representatives yesterday to explain why he would not comply with requests to vote for reauthorization of the Patriot Act without reform: Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this motion to concur in the [...]

The following is a transcript of remarks made by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy upon this morning’s release of the U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on the FBI’s illegal seizing of thousands of phone records of Americans (including those of American newspaper reporters) by: lying to phone companies, lying to FISA court [...]