Salon.com > D-Ore.

Oregon senator proposes appeal to Monsanto Protection Act

Mon, 20 May 2013 20:26:00 +0000

The so-called "Monsanto Protection Act" -- a bill that protects genetically modified seed manufacturers from litigation in the face of health risks -- sneaked into law with the passing of spending bill HR 933. Food safety and activist groups, including Food Democracy Now and the Center for Food Safety, were swift to condemn the biotech rider and the underhanded way it was anonymously slipped into the larger spending bill without appropriate review by the agricultural or judiciary committees.

On Monday, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., announced he would put forward an amendment to the Senate farm bill that would repeal the controversial provision.

How do you explain drone killings? With post-Orwellian “Newspeak”

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 17:00:00 +0000

John Brennan’s confirmation hearing on Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee struck many observers as a small but significant step in the direction of openness, a chink in the armor of secrecy that the last two presidential administrations have erected around the “war on terror.” Maybe that will turn out to be correct, and the incoming CIA director – the principal architect of President Obama’s drone war, and until recently a defender of rendition and “enhanced interrogation” – will launch a new era of transparency in Langley. While we wait for that, would you like to see this bridge I’ve got for sale in Brooklyn?

Indeed, watching the Brennan hearing, and then struggling through the troubling Justice Department “white paper” spelling out the legal justification for the drone killings of American citizens (which was recently acquired and released by NBC News), left me with quite a different feeling. In large part, this was the feeling that our government’s imperial creep continues uninterrupted, that most people simply don’t care (irrespective of their supposed political views) and that almost everyone involved in this charade, especially those of us in the media who are supposed to serve as the watchdogs, has agreed to ignore the most obvious and glaring questions.

Brennan asked to show legal opinions behind drone killings

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:32:00 +0000

This month a federal judge defended the Obama administration's right to keep secret the legal justifications for targeted drone killings. But a cadre of senators is pushing the issue again. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote a letter to John Brennan -- nominee for CIA director, Obama's counterterrorism adviser, and central architect of U.S. drone warfare -- asking to see the legal opinions and rules behind the targeted killing of U.S. citizens in counterterrorism efforts and demanding a list of countries where America is conducting shadow wars. Wyden wrote:

Senior intelligence officials have said publicly that they have to authority to knowingly use lethal force against Americans in the course of counterterrorism operations, and have indicated that there are secret legal opinions issued by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and explain the basis of this authority. I have asked repeatedly to see these opinions, and I have been provided some relevant information on the topic, but I have yet to see the opinions themselves.

... Second, as you may be aware, my staff and I have been asking for over a year for the complete list of countries in which the intelligence community has used its lethal counterterrorism authorities. To my surprise and dismay, the intelligence community has declined to provide me with the complete list.

Feinstein defends domestic surveillance program

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 21:05:00 +0000

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wanted the answer to a basic question on Thursday: How many Americans does the United States government currently spy on?

The question arose ahead of a vote over reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a 1978 law permitting the government to spy on correspondence between Americans and foreign individuals. Wyden, leading the charge to challenge the reauthorization, argues that the "Senate cannot say that we passed the smell test with respect to vigorous oversight if we don't have some sense of how many Americans … are being swept up under the legislation."

A number of FISA provisions passed in recent years are set to expire at the end of this year, and as Politico reported, "[Wyden] has placed a hold on the bill as he seeks information from the federal authorities, who have told Wyden in the past that they can’t deliver that data [on how many Americans are caught up in the surveillance dragnet]. And Wyden said this week that he’ll maintain that hold unless the Senate allows a vote on his amendments to introduce new legal checks and transparency rules to the law."