When the head of the CIA's torture unit decided to destroy videotapes of his team's horrific work, he unwittingly set in motion a series of events that led to the release this week of the most massive, detailed documentation of unlawful behavior by high-ranking government officials and intentional infliction of pain on noncombatants by the United States government since the Civil War era. Here is the backstory. Published December 10, 2014
The city of Ferguson, Missouri, is now burned into our consciousness in a way that few other places are. In my youth, the race riots in Newark, Detroit and Los Angeles marked turning points in my own and in the public's awareness of the problems of a black underclass that perceives itself as being so unfairly governed by a white power structure that it resorts to violence. Published December 3, 2014
What if the government is designed to perpetuate itself? What if the real levers of governmental power are pulled by agents, diplomats and bureaucrats behind the scenes? What if they stay in power no matter who is elected president or which major political party controls Congress? Published November 26, 2014
Within hours of realizing that his party lost control of the U.S. Senate last week, President Obama nominated Loretta Lynch, the chief federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, N.Y., to be the next attorney general. Published November 12, 2014
With the midterm elections complete, it is clear now that the Republicans will control the U.S. Senate for the next two years. Will it make a difference? Published November 5, 2014
In the years following the adoption of the Constitution, before he was secretary of state under President Thomas Jefferson and then president himself, James Madison, who wrote the Constitution, was a member of the House of Representatives. Published October 29, 2014
Earlier this week, the federal government's National Science Foundation, an entity created to encourage the study of science, announced that it had awarded a grant to study what people say about themselves and others in social media. Published October 22, 2014
Earlier this week, FBI Director James Comey in an interview on "60 Minutes" revealed a flawed understanding of personal freedom. Published October 15, 2014
While the political commentators in the nation's capital are wrapped up in the debate over what to do about the Islamic State … the president's spies continue to capture massive amounts of personal information about hundreds of millions of us and lie about it. Published October 8, 2014
When President Obama attributed the rise in Iraq of the Islamic State, or ISIS, to the failures of the U.S. intelligence community earlier this week, naming and blaming directly National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper, he was attempting to deflect criticism of his own incompetence. Published October 1, 2014
What if the American invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction? What if whatever weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein once had were sold to him in the 1980s by American arms dealers with the express permission of the U.S. government? Published September 24, 2014
The nation has lost sight of the more fundamental issue of President Obama's infidelity to the rule of law. Published September 17, 2014
Chief among those restraints, in Madison's view, was the delegation to Congress, and not to the president, of the power to wage war. Published September 10, 2014
At the root of the chaos in the Middle East and here at home are governments that respect no limits on their exercise of power. Published September 3, 2014
