The Postal Service came under fire last year for releasing a series of stamps featuring the characters from the “Harry Potter” movies. In that instance the USPS went around the committee to release the series. Some members of the panel were upset, not in the least because the character isn’t even American.   read more

The fight for control of the U.S. Senate has resulted in more than 900,000 commercials airing in battleground states, with experts projecting the final tally to break a million by the time all the races have concluded. Consider this: all the Senate races combined to flood the airwaves with 83,000 ads just last week. In North Carolina, two candidates managed to dump 11,000 commercials on TV stations from October 21 to October 27. The deluge averaged out to about an ad a minute.   read more

Rick Berman told attendees at the Western Energy Alliance conference “you can either win ugly or lose pretty,” that the struggle against environmentalists is “an endless war” and to prepare to “budget for it.” Berman claimed to have received six-figure checks from some attendees. Anonymity is something Berman promises his clients. “We run all of this stuff through nonprofit[s]," he assured them. "People don’t know who supports us.”   read more

Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp has not processed registrations for at least 40,000 new voters who were signed up under a program to register minorities. A lawsuit forcing him to do so hit a wall in the form of Fulton Judge Christopher Brasher, who denied the plaintiffs’ petition. “All in all – a Republican appointed judge has backed the Republican Secretary of State to deny the right to vote to a largely African American and Latino population,” said NAACP's Dr. Francys Johnson.   read more

“We are extremely concerned and find it unacceptable that the FBI misappropriated the name of The Associated Press and published a false story attributed to AP,” said AP's Paul Colford. “This ploy violated AP’s name and undermined AP’s credibility.” ACLU's Christopher Soghoian said the FBI’s actions demonstrate that the “ends do not justify the means. It’s a dangerous road impersonating the media. If people do not trust the news media, then our democracy cannot function properly.”   read more

One of the nation’s leading universities has come forward with its own numbers on the disturbing problem of sexual assaults, which could spur fact-finding by other institutions. Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that one in six female undergraduates had been sexually assaulted while attending the prestigious school. University President L. Rafael Reif said he was “disturbed by the extent and nature of the problem” at MIT. “Sexual assault violates our core MIT values."   read more

The FBI has identified a federal contractor suspected of leaking sensitive documents about the terrorist watch list to journalist Glenn Greenwald. Agents searched the suspect’s home, leading to an investigation by federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia. “It’s fair to say that there are people who have been inspired by Edward Snowden’s courage and by the great good and virtue that it has achieved,” said Greenwald.   read more

One example cited is Komen’s decision to accept $100,000 from Baker Hughes, supplier of equipment to the oil and gas industry. Baker Hughes has helped companies carry out hydraulic fracturing operations that use cancer-causing chemicals. In response to public pressure, Komen canceled founder Nancy Brinker's acceptance of the check. Komen has also partnered with water bottling companies that use BPAs, a carcinogen, and fast-food providers accused of selling food containing carcinogens.   read more

Led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and former President José Ramos-Horta of East Timor, the Nobel laureates want Obama, who won the prize in 2009, to make “full disclosure to the American people of the extent and use of torture.” That would include releasing the Senate report on the CIA's use of torture last decade against al Qaeda members and others. “When a nation’s leaders condone and even order torture, that nation has lost its way,” wrote the laureates.   read more

State Rep. Stacy Abrams (D) led an effort to register those who've never voted before, mostly minorities, and added about 90,000 people to the rolls. About 40,000 of those registrations have been lost. Georgia’s top election official, Brian Kemp, has been unhelpful with the missing registrations. “We asked the Secretary of State to meet with us. We wanted to understand if we were doing something wrong, or if there was another database... But he refused...” said Abrams.   read more

After making mortgage payments on her condo for 16 years, she refinanced with a “pick-a-payment” loan through World Savings. The next day, Kilgore realized she’d agreed to a bad loan and tried to get it rescinded, but World Savings wouldn’t agree. Kilgore’s loan was eventually acquired by Wells Fargo and was kicked out of her condo. That meant that Kilgore was unable to receive subsidies to run the oxygen concentrator she needed to breathe because she didn’t have a permanent address.   read more

University of Wisconsin researchers are planning to take newborns from their mothers, keep them isolated for six weeks except for feeding and cleaning, then put them with one other six-week-old and torture the pair with live snakes and intruders. If those newborns were human, people would be going to jail. Instead the subjects are rhesus monkeys, chosen because they’ll act and feel pretty much like a human would when subjected to those stresses.   read more

In the fight for control of the U.S. Senate, the battle between incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan and Thom Tillis, Republican Speaker of the North Carolina House, has become ground zero for an onslaught of negative commercials. In one week, North Carolinians were subjected to an average of one attack ad for every minute of TV time. “Congratulations, North Carolina: You’ve become the year’s great state of political hate,” wrote Dave Levinthal.   read more

Every year, feeding the homeless is getting a little bit harder to do in the U.S. Since 2010 there has been close to a 50% increase in the number of American cities that have passed or introduced laws restricting the sharing of food with homeless people. Fort Lauderdale has become the latest to do so--the 22nd city since January 2013 to restrict such practices through community pressures. Another 10 U.S. cities are in the process of passing such legislation.   read more

Judge Hellerstein found the government’s declaration to be overreaching. “I have reviewed some of these photographs and I know that many…are relatively innocuous while others need more serious consideration,” he wrote. The judge rejected the Obama administration’s sweeping suppression of the 2,100 images and ordered the government to provide a written explanation for each photograph that justifies it being withheld from public disclosure.   read more

It's getting harder for criminal defendants to win their cases due to judges looking over their shoulders and worrying about political accusations of being soft on crime. This development stems from increases in campaign spending on races for judicial seats. “[State] justices, already the targets of sensationalist ads labeling them ‘soft on crime,’ are under increasing pressure to allow electoral politics to influence their decisions, even when fundamental rights are at stake.”   read more