Duty to Warn

Mercy for Animals investigations found that Wal-Mart uses pork products from factory farms that put female pigs in gestation crates.
This investigation documented: Pregnant pigs confined to filthy, metal gestation crates so small they are unable to even turn around or lie down comfortably
Workers slamming conscious piglets headfirst into the ground and leaving them to slowly suffer and die
Workers ripping out the testicles and slicing off the tails of piglets without the use of any painkillers
Sick and injured pigs with severe, bleeding wounds or infections left to suffer without veterinary care.

>Tell Walmart executives you won't stand for blatant animal abuse. Urge them to phase out cruel gestation crates.

Post a message on Walmart's Facebook page urging the company to phase out cruel gestation crates.

Speak out against Walmart's cruel practices on twitter. #walmartcruelty

Be a voice for the voiceless - We'll send the petition to each of Walmart's top executives.

While fruitlessly scouring the banks of the Potomac river for the mythical beast known as Robust Congressional Oversight, our eyes were drawn by the light of an eleven star constellation often hidden in the night and fog of post-constitutional America. Behind the clouds of official secrecy the judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) cast their invisible light onto the lives of the entire global family, illuminating our every word for the watchful generals and vengeful angels of the national security state.

The President, while defending the NSA's varied and all-encompassing spy program, justifies the practices by claiming that judicial review legalizes them. Few people are familiar with this court, its makeup and operations, or the scope of its authority. The evidence it sees is classified and unchallenged. The decisions it makes are state secrets. It is obfuscation to term this courts function review and even greater obfuscation to pretend that it is a neutral guardian of human rights.

Darrell Issa he could turn the tempest of the IRS's extra scrutiny of Tea-Party group's non-profit application into a Teapot Dome. On August 5, Issa, who is chair of the House Oversight Committee, widened his stalled investigation of the IRS to include contracts between revenue agency and the Federal Elections Commission. On August 7, Reuters broke the story that the NSA had been sharing personnel and resources with the DEA and IRS. Issa's aggressive grandstanding and hearings has yet to lead to the issuance of subpoenas into NSA-IRS wiretapping and data mining.

Issa's hearings and compulsive subpoena behaviors focus on IRS questioning of tax-exempt organizations’ involvement in electoral politics in ways that are not permitted within the framework of permitted non-profit charters. Issa's concerns are that certain conservative groups may have been subjected to greater scrutiny.

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the famous March on Washington — Aug. 28 — Americans will recall Dr. King’s famous “dream”; many can recite entire passages of his historic address.

But it’s worth recalling the full meaning of that dream. The March on Washington was a march for justice. And the Civil Rights Movement transformed the country — gaining equal access to public accommodations, outlawing racial discrimination in employment, securing and protecting the right to vote with the Voting Rights Act.

But the 1963 March was titled “March on Washinton for Jobs and Freedom.” Economic opportunity was at its center. As a key organizer of the march, A. Philip Randolph, president of the Negro American Labor Council, put it:

“We have no future in a society in which 6 million black and white people are unemployed and millions more live in poverty. Nor is the goal of our civil rights revolution merely the passage of civil rights legislation. Yes, we want all public accommodations open to all citizens, but those accommodations will mean little to those who cannot afford to use them.”

On August 9, President Obama gave a major policy speech on NSA spying programs. The compliant White House press corps promptly dumped a barrel of ink on the flesh of fallen trees to lovingly describe his statements as a major change in direction for the administration on privacy and civil liberties. It is not clear if the government-approved beltway faithful had been provided with the same transcript as the Free Press. While the housebroken howlers heralded vague promises made by the war criminal in chief, legally literate citizens saw the announcement for what it was, a delaying obfuscation and a whitewash. The first implementation of these announced solutions came today.

The United States government continued its attack on internet activists this week, attempting to gag imprisoned journalist Barrett Brown and his defense team while forcing the shuttering of several popular secure mail services and an exit node of TOR, the internet’s most widely used anonymous proxy service.

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”
George Orwell "Politics and the English Language," 1946

Two months ago General Clapper sat before his bosses at the Senate Intelligence Committee to answer questions. They were engaging in a ritual called robust oversight. The ritual has a number of significant acts. First, the generals representing the intelligence community hold their hands in the air and promise not to lie, invoking the Almighty God. Then the representatives of the people ask questions that they think they know the answers to. The General then gives an answer which any of us would call a lie. The Senators then pretend to believe him.

The anonymous browser TOR is the most popular end user security tool in the world. Using this browser allows people to surf the internet anonymously. The service is used worldwide to avoid secret police surveillance by dissidents living under repressive regimes in places like Syria, Turkey and the United States. It is also used by hackers and others to conceal their identities. According to Wired Magazine's security blog “Threat Level,” the service was compromised by a hack Sunday night.

The malware inserted itself into the browser via a compromised website and immediately began broadcasting the infected computer's MAC address, user name, IP address, and any websites visited subsequently to an IP address in Herndon Virginia owned by Verizon and block leased to SAIC, a major defense and intelligence contractor.

After suffering another loss on the national stage in 2012 the Republican Party seemed ready for a period of serious reflection. Thereafter, Republicans in the House of Representatives re-launched their numerous attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and reassured the American people that any real immigration reform is out of the question. Both political maneuvers call into question the earnestness of that reflective period after the 2012 Presidential Election. A recent squabble between two Republicans concerning national security and personal privacy, however, has resurrected that period for thoughtful contemplation about the GOP’s future direction.

Americans are just beginning to discover that a secret court has been quietly erasing their constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. They are also learning that this court is made up primarily of conservative activists from the Republican Party who have no respect for the original intent of the Constitution’s framers.

With the blessing of this secret court, the National Security Agency (and well-paid companies like Booz Allen) have recorded billions of phone calls and e-mails belonging to nearly all Americans, with the intent of searching them later.