It appears that Rand Paul has reached some kind of deal on his insistence to get votes for his amendments to the Patriot Act. There will now be votes on the amendments, with a likely 60-vote threshold. But the expectation is that the amendments will fail, and final passage will be secured Thursday. That will be followed by a quick vote in the House, and then a flight of the bill to Europe so President Obama can sign it before a midnight deadline when the three provisions of the measure would expire. And you said Congress can never be efficient. They can when motivated!

The GOP House leadership is really pissed at Tim Pawlenty for trying to derail the deal, and this report will only anger them further. Boehner’s whip operation is definitely nervous and trying to nail down the last few votes.

No one really wants to report on what GE’s approach to taxes is. To the extent they do, they accept GE’s explanation unquestioningly. But if the AP had a sense of what GE’s real approach to taxes is, they would never have fallen for the hoax in the first place.

In an otherwise interesting article summarizing much of what is wrong with the non-accountability policies of the U.S. state when it comes to punishing its torturers, Associated Press reporters Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo repeat in passing an old canard about the CIA’s previous activities in regards to interrogation. The CIA had never been in [...]

Why is there a bill before the Senate Judiciary Committee that would allow the Attorney General to block certain Internet domain names from ISPs?

The Pentagon’s public relations machine is working overtime these days trying to sell a theme of “progress” in Afghanistan to push back against calls to end the war. The message machine behind this push is gargantuan, costing $547 million and employing more than 27,000 people. But, as our latest Rethink Afghanistan video shows, all that wasted P.R. money can’t paper over the fact that the Afghanistan War isn’t making us safer, and it’s not worth the cost.

On college campuses, credit card companies entice naive undergrads into signing up for super-high-interest-rate credit cards by giving away “perceived high-value items” like t-shirts or coffee mugs. They’re called perceived high value items because they really aren’t worth as much as people assume. Their only purpose is to distract from the terrible terms in the [...]

it’s going to take a lot more than an AP article and a hundred petition signatures to secure a meeting with Brown. Here are some things you can do to help:

1. SIGN the petition at change.org and ask all of your friends and family to do the same, especially if they are Massachusetts residents.
2. CALL Brown’s D.C. office (202-224-4543) and his local office (617-565-3170) to ask whether or not Brown will meet with us before April 17.
3. JOIN the Facebook group and ask your Facebook friends to do the same
4. HELP us fight any misinformation or nativism that you see online regarding our meeting request.

Currently, we are not asking for any policy commitments from Sen. Brown. We are only asking for a simple meeting. We want Sen. Brown to hear the stories of immigrant youth who have been affected by the broken federal immigration system so that he can decide for himself what should be done. We believe that if Sen. Brown hears from these youth, who know only the United States as their home, that he will do the right thing.

Andrew Breitbart is steaming mad that the Associated Press “whitewashed” his 118 word comment on the ACORN report. Readers really do need to read his comment, too. Really.

Liz Sidoti, brings Republicans their favorite donuts, spreads their chosen talking points.