Chinese hackers have successfully accessed classified information about U.S. weapons programs, including those that play key roles in the military’s anti-missile systems.   read more

To qualify for the tax exemption, participation in elections cannot be a group’s primary activity, with circumstances and facts regarding its work carrying at least as much weight as the amount of money that is spent. This can include the group’s website, the material it publishes, and whether its members are employed by political parties.   read more

Citigroup (2012 revenues: $70.17 billion), for example, got one of its favorite bills to exempt many trades from new regulation through the House Financial Services Committee this month over Treasury Department objections, with 71 of the 80 lines in the bill written by lobbyists for major banks. Two critical paragraphs written by Citigroup were copied word for word, with the sole exception of two words that Congress changed from singular to plural.   read more

Actually, the decision is easy to explain…from a political point of view. Republican Party leaders have taken the position that if any good comes out of Obamacare, the Democrats will get the credit, so it is better to sabotage it whenever possible. In addition, poor people rarely vote for Republicans anyway, so helping them is not an electoral priority.   read more

The ambitious and costly program, dubbed “Star Wars,” is now in its fourth decade, having consumed $209 billion while never being tested, even on a limited scale, in the heat of battle. Lewis and Postol expressed concerns because in each U.S. test, the trajectory, timing of the launch and the type of missile being fired were all known in advance.   read more

According to Elon Musk, Tesla’s co-founder, the company had another five years to pay the government back (while the Energy Department claimed the number was actually nine years). Instead, it fully paid off the debt this month, thanks to a surge in its stock price. "Having accepted taxpayer money, I thought we had an obligation to repay it as soon as we reasonably could," Musk told The Wall Street Journal, “If economics were the only consideration, we would not have done this.”   read more

Critics have detailed a number of concerns regarding BLM’s latest rules draft. Among them is a provision that allows drillers to not disclose the chemicals they are using until 30 days after they have begun drilling. Another rule allows drillers to withhold trade secrets without being required to explain their reason for doing so. Observers also note that there is no requirement for well operators to collect and disclose air and water quality data prior to fracking.   read more

The cyber-attacks, in fact, may have been aimed at learning the identities of Chinese intelligence operatives under surveillance in the U.S. by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), The Washington Post reported. Google technicians discovered that its database containing years of information on surveillance operations had been breached. Included were classified court orders approving surveillance of U.S.–based foreign agents, diplomats and terrorists.   read more

Four Iraqis claim the contractor helped torture them while providing interrogation services at Abu Ghraib. All of them were ultimately released without being charged with a crime. They allege that CACI subjected them to a variety of torture techniques, including “electric shocks; repeated brutal beatings; sleep deprivation; sensory deprivation; forced nudity; stress positions; sexual assault; mock executions; humiliation; hooding; isolated detention; and prolonged hanging from the limbs.”   read more

In a major power grab of dubious constitutionality, the U.S. military last week claimed for itself the power to act unilaterally—without the authorization of the President—in case of “civil disturbances,” threatening a 200-year-old system that strictly forbids the military from becoming involved in civilian law enforcement. Seemingly innocuous in its brevity and simplicity, the new rule's chief danger lies in its vagueness.   read more

The study authors examined 11,944 abstracts published in peer reviewed science journals from 1991 to 2011 that included the words “Global Climate Change” or “Global Warming.” Categorizing each abstract according to its apparent position on global warming, they found that 66.4% expressed no position, 32.4% expressed acceptance, 0.7% rejection, and 0.3% uncertainty as to the cause of warming.   read more

Monsanto sees the international market as the source of enormous potential profit, if only foreign governments would let Monsanto make inroads into their agricultural economies. And, in a major example of corporate welfare, the State Department has marshaled its resources to lobby for Monsanto.   read more

The reason that the IRS has instead pursued the small outfits is because many don’t have legal counsel and therefore make for an easier target, Chris Ashby, a lawyer to conservative groups, told the Times. “The big groups are generally well-advised, lawyered up,” he said. “Their tax forms are artfully drawn.”   read more

In a news conference on Tuesday, Holder defended the spying, claiming that it was done in response to one of “the top two or three most serious leaks that I’ve ever seen.” He also claimed that he was not involved in the case and shifted the blame onto his deputy, James M. Cole. For his part, Cole defended his own actions by saying that the records “have been closely held and reviewed solely for the purposes of this ongoing criminal investigation.”   read more

Despite a federal appeals court ruling that government snooping on emails requires a search warrant, the FBI and other federal law enforcers regularly ignore this constitutional mandate, according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act. At the same time that it acts as if it has the authority to violate the privacy of citizens’ emails, the FBI is seeking Congressional authorization for its unlawful activities.   read more

The President did not, however, cancel an April 13, 2006, memo regarding the 2006 revision of the Army Field Manual and its controversial Appendix M on interrogation. That memo justifies the use of isolation, sleep deprivation, and forms of sensory deprivation that have been denounced as torture or abuse by a number of human rights and legal groups—and which sparked the ongoing hunger strike at Guantánamo.   read more