Let's also say that you simply accept at face value the Government's unverified assertion that it has halted "systemic" illegal/unconstitutional surveillance by the National Security Administration. And let's say that you still believe such an assertion even though a few years after it was aired 1) the Director of National Intelligence admitted illegal surveillance was still taking place and 2) Mother Jones reports that an 86-page court ruling "determined that the government had violated the spirit of federal surveillance laws and engaged in unconstitutional spying."

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In an unusual move, the ACLU is suing on behalf of itself as customers of Verizon, arguing that the program " infringes upon the ACLU's First Amendment rights, including the twin liberties of free expression and free association," according to a statement on the website. The suit also argues that the program constitutes a violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure, as well as Section 215 of the Patriot Act:

The statute requires that records seized under its authority be "relevant" to an authorized foreign-intelligence or terrorism investigation. But while that language imposes a real limitation on when the government can use Section 215, the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] order covering all [Verizon Business Network Services] customers demonstrates that this "relevance" restraint is shockingly inadequate. Similarly, the FISC order shows that the government—with the FISC's secret approval—is acquiring future records of telephone subscribers based on the same "relevance" requirement, even though the statute uses words that clearly show it was only meant to cover "tangible things" already in existence.

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For example, Richard Haas of the Council on Foreign Relations said of Edward Snowden: "'Whistleblower' is person who reveals wrongdoing, corruption, illegal activity. none of this applies here even if you oppose U.S. government policy." Likewise, the Boston Globe's Bryan Bender insists, "I wish media would stop calling Snowden a whistleblower -- it maligns those who truly reveal corrupt or illegal activity." And the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin definitively states: "These were legally authorized programs."

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How ironic is this cocktail of pseudo-feminism and American exceptionalism? Deeply, given that Barto, an Arizona state senator, was explaining two years ago why the state needed a ban on race and sex-selective abortions (the race and sex being that of the fetus) -- a law the ACLU, the Maricopa County NAACP, and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum challenged in court this week in an unprecedented fashion. In other words, a law explicitly targeting and trying to limit the choices of women of color was being sold as their redemption.

In the two years since the law was passed, no one has ever been charged under it. That’s because the point was always to try to seize back the feminist mantle for the antiabortion side, and to tar abortion with both racism and sexism. (They even named it after Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass.) While sex-selective abortions are a real phenomenon in Asian countries with heavy son preference, the U.S. in general and Arizona in particular don’t have a problem with them. The complaint notes, “ The state's own statistics show no difference in birth ratio of boys and girls to Asian women as compared to other women.”

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Rosen wasn't charged. In truth, the government never really intended to charge him. They just needed a judge to agree that Rosen probably violated the Espionage Act so that they could get their warrant to read his emails, as part of their real investigation into his source, an intelligence analyst named Richard Kim. It worked. That's the scandal: that the government could charge a journalist with, effectively, spying, simply for reporting. Barack Obama yesterday announced that he did not want his Justice Department treating the act of reporting as criminal. He is going to convene a panel, and urge the passage of a shield law. The question is, what will he do about Holder?

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Compton’s ex-husband, Joshua, who had once been charged with stalking her (he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge) had asked for enforcement of a "morality clause" in the couple’s original divorce decree, which bars overnight guests who aren’t related by blood or marriage while the children are there. Of course, as a lesbian couple in Texas, they can’t be married. Never mind the fact that their children “are all happy and well adjusted,” according to Price.

Faced with the choice between Compton's children and sharing a home, the couple has said they will reluctantly follow the order, though they believe it to be unconstitutional.

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The advocacy arm of the nonprofit has launched an online campaign urging the show's producers to marry Cameron Tucker and Mitchell Pritchett, the gay couple who comprise one-third of the hit ABC sitcom's Pritchett clan. Until now, the two have been living in unwedded sort-of bliss along with a daughter; gay marriage is not legal in California, where the characters live.

"Modern Family" has been, in its first four seasons, an unusual cultural flashpoint. Both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have both claimed the show as a favorite, while Cameron and Mitchell, specifically, have been criticized by cultural observers for their relatively loveless union. Before the current ACLU campaign, there was an online petition asking the two characters to kiss on-air. An NPR critic described the pair as sharing a "hateful dynamic," adding, "Surely, the show can find a way to let them occasionally just be nice to each other." They don't particularly seem like a pair ready to commit to one another further.

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The debate over the “Defense of Religion Act” in North Carolina played out with the predictability of a sitcom. I offer this modest proposal, then, to remind both sides that if this is a war, then they have fought to a stalemate, and it is time for some new tactics, by which I mean: the history of religion in America demonstrates that the winner of the culture war will be the side that does the opposite of everything they are doing now.

Consider the tussle in North Carolina. Last month, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Board of Commissioners in Rowan County, North Carolina who have a habit of opening every session with a Christian prayer. An official meeting from December 2007, for example, began:

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Last year, the ACLU sent a FOIA request to the IRS seeking records regarding whether it gets a warrant before reading people’s email, text messages and other private electronic communications. The IRS has now responded by sending us 247 pages of records describing the policies and practices of its criminal investigative arm when seeking the contents of emails and other electronic communications.

So does the IRS always get a warrant? Unfortunately, while the documents we have obtained do not answer this question point blank, they suggest otherwise. This question is too important for the IRS not to be completely forthright with the American public. The IRS should tell the public whether it always gets a warrant to access email and other private communications in the course of criminal investigations. And if the agency does not get a warrant, it should change its policy to always require one.

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In 1943, Allied forces achieved a hard-fought victory in the North African campaign, captured Sicily, and began to fight their way up the Italian peninsula. Victories in places such as El-Alamein, Salerno, and Anzio gave America some confidence that the Allies would ultimately prevail in Europe. That confidence allowed the American public to shift more of its attention to the Pacific Theater. Popular magazines such as National Geographic began to publish more maps and articles about the Pacific because Americans suddenly wanted to know a lot more about Saipan and Leyte Gulf.

The same sort of shift is happening now for the left in America’s long-running culture war. From the 1980s until the birth of the Tea Party, most of the action was in the Social Theater, in which the religious right and the secular left waged an existential struggle for the soul of American society. Issues related to sexuality, drugs, religion, family life, and patriotism were particularly vexing, and many people over 40 can recall the names of battlefields such as Mapplethorpe, needle exchange, 2 Live Crew, and the flag-burning amendment. But the left won a smashing victory in the 2012 elections, including the first victories at the ballot box for gay marriage. These triumphs, combined with polling data showing the tolerant attitudes of younger voters, give the left confidence that it will ultimately prevail on most issues in the Social Theater. The power base of the religious right is older, white, rural Protestants, a group that immigration, demography, and urban renewal have consigned to play an ever-shrinking role in American presidential elections.

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Representatives from the two groups took to Reddit Monday to answer questions about CISPA and their campaign to stop the bill's progression into law. EFF's Mark Jaycox explained the current state of CISPA bill H.R. 624:

CISPA is currently at the "markup" stage. This means that the bill has been introduced and will be discussed by the full committee at a meeting. The committee will vote on amendments, edit (ie, "markup") the bill, and vote on a final version of the bill. Once the final version is voted "out of committee," it will be ready for a full floor vote where the entire House can vote on it.

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As WRAL first reported, the bill is a response to a move by the ACLU last month against the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. The ACLU says the board "has opened 97 percent of its meetings since 2007 with explicitly Christian prayers," a stunning, defiant number. The new bill proposes that "Each state in the union is sovereign and may independently determine how that state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion" and that "The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion." Shorter: nyah nyah nyah -- you can't make us stop talking to Jesus at government functions.

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According to the ACLU's complaint, the government violated the Fifth Amendment due process rights of 13 Americans, including four military veterans, by placing them on the No Fly List and refusing to give them any after-the-fact explanation or a hearing at which they can clear their names. The government, invoking the state secrets doctrine, refuses to assert or deny the existence of names on such a list.

Via the ACLU:

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The bill, introduced by Reps. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and Ted Poe, R-Texas, "would require law enforcement to get a search warrant or some other kind of judicial approval for surveillance before using drones to investigate criminal wrongdoing," reported Firedoglake's Kevin Gosztola, adding, "It would, however, allow drone use for fire and rescue missions, monitoring droughts, assessing flood damage or chasing a fleeing criminal." The legislation would also ban law enforcement from arming the surveillance drones.

The ACLU has come out in support of the bill. "Unmanned drones must not become a perpetual presence in our lives, hovering over us, following us and recording our every move," said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the ACLU in a statement. "Strict rules should govern the use of drones by the government. By requiring that law enforcement secure judicial approval before using drones, this legislation achieves the right balance for the use of these eyes in the sky."

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The move sparked national outrage, and now officials at the high school are trying to distance themselves from those planning the gay-free fête.

In an interview with local NBC affiliate WTWO, principal David Springer made clear that the "traditional" prom committee was an independent group and that the school had no involvement. He also said that all students will be welcome at the official prom in the Spring: "Anybody can go to the prom... Of course, a girl could go out with another girl if they didn't have a date or that was their choice."

The church that hosted the anti-gay prom organizers has also come under fire for their involvement: "Our church has no involvement in this whatsoever. It's a community thing where people have met here," Pastor Dale Wise at Sullivan First Christian Church told Indiana's WTHR.

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Kawana Young, a single mother of two kids, was arrested in Michigan after failing to pay money she owed as a result of minor traffic offenses. She was recently laid off from her job, and could not pay the fees she owed because she couldn’t find another source of employment. So a judge sentenced her to three days in jail. In addition, Young was charged additional fees for being booked and for room and board for a place she did not want to be. In total, she has been jailed five times for being unable to pay her debts.

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The No-Fly List compiles more than 21,000 names (over 500 of American citizens) suspected of involvement with terrorist activity. If your name is on the list you can't fly into or out of the United States. As Hussain notes, echoing concerns expressed this week by the ACLU, "over the past decade there have been countless documented cases of individuals who have suddenly found themselves permanently stranded abroad after being banned from the United States despite holding legal residency and/or citizenship in the country." He writes:

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However, a confidential Justice Department memo obtained by NBC News sheds some light on the legal reasoning for including U.S. citizens on Obama's controversial kill lists. According to the ACLU's Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer, "It's a pretty remarkable document."

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As Salon reported last year when Emmerson first announced the U.N. project, the human rights attorney told a Harvard conference that his team would be weighing up evidence as to whether the Obama administration was guilty of war crimes. He said:

[It is] alleged that since President Obama took office at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims and more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. [U.N. consultant, professor of human rights] Christof Heyns … has described such attacks, if they prove to have happened, as war crimes. I would endorse that view.

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