Government & Communications

Rep Eric Swalwell (D-CA), a member of the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees, introduced the Journalist Protection Act to make a federal crime of certain attacks on those reporting the news.

In December 2017, the White House took down the popular “We the People” petitions website with the promise that it would be restored by “late January.” Now petitions.whitehouse.gov has relaunched. A number of petitions have signature totals that surpass the 100,000 threshold used during the Obama years to initiate a formal response, but the White House has not responded to a petition since President Donald Trump took office.

The practice of printing hard-copies of the “FCC Record” should be eliminated. To be crystal clear, I am not suggesting that we keep its contents or information from the public.  On the contrary, I suggest that it makes little sense to continue to publish paper copies when other mechanisms are more consumer friendly, cost-efficient, and easier to access.  Instead, the Commission should make its documents centrally located and easier to find for interested parties electronically, making paper copies of the Record unnecessary on a going forward basis.  If Encyclopedia Britannica coul

[Commentary] I voted to release the Nunes memo because I believe that the duty to inform the American public is one of my biggest responsibilities as an elected representative in our democratic republic. This is in accordance with the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, which directed House and Senate committees to “exercise continuous watchfulness” over executive-branch programs.

Disrupting traffic has long been a way for protesters to call attention to a cause. But when the cause itself is speed—in this case, Internet speed—the move takes on an extra level of defiance. That’s what one cyclist made clear when he used his bike to protest the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC voted in December to end Obama-era rules for Internet service providers.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) says Congress late last year received “extraordinarily important new documents” in its investigation of President Donald Trump and his campaign’s possible collusion with the 2016 Russian election hacking, opening up significant new lines of inquiry in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s probe of the president.

At the center of the firestorm over a congressional memo that President Trump and his allies say reveals federal authorities’ missteps is a 40-year-old law passed in the wake of explosive domestic spying scandals. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) grew from congressional investigations into spy agencies’ eavesdropping on Americans, including civil rights activists and protesters against the Vietnam War, without warrants. The law created a warrant requirement for federal authorities to intercept the communications of anyone in the United States, including foreigners.

Across the world, autocratic leaders are engaging in increasingly brazen behavior — rigging votes, muzzling the press and persecuting opponents — as they dispense with even a fig leaf of democratic practice once offered to placate the United States or gain international legitimacy. They  know they run little risk of rebuke from an American president who has largely abandoned the promotion of human rights and democracy in favor of his narrow “America First” agenda.

Two Missouri lawyers have sued the Missouri governor’s office over its use of Confide, an ephemeral messaging mobile app, which they say is in violation of state public records law. The two men are set to appear before a county judge on Feb 2 to ask for a temporary restraining order that would bar current and future use of such apps by the governor and his staff. Lawyers representing Gov Eric Greitens (R-MO) say that such a move is unwarranted.

President Donald Trump boasted that the viewership of his State of the Union speech was “the highest number in history” — a claim at odds with ratings figures released the day before. In a Feb 1 tweet, President Trump said, "Thank you for all of the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech. 45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history. @FoxNews beat every other Network, for the first time ever, with 11.7 million people tuning in. Delivered from the heart!