Apparently, concerns about government abuse of civil liberties highly depends on who is in control of the government. While Republicans and Independents disapprove of the Justice Department’s obtaining the AP phone records, a plurality of Democrats support it. From Pew:

Think Progress, the blog for the non-partisan Center On American Progress, has made a name for itself pretending to be a “progressive” news and analysis site despite reflexively defending the Democratic Party and being funded by an organization that refuses to disclose its donors (one hint it means “to soar” in Esperanto). But now the site has gone from being a party organ dishonestly posing as a group of principled activists into defending the most Nixonian practices of the Obama Administration.

We’re happy to see the Department of Justice take Standard & Poor’s to court — but this civil suit represents just a small step in holding Wall Street accountable for the 2008 financial crisis.

Well that didn’t take long. Less than 24 hours after PBS aired Frontline’s The Untouchables, a program focused on the failures of the Department of Justice to make cases against Wall Street bankers despite ample evidence of fraud, the head of DOJ’s criminal division resigns. It’s hard to dismiss as a coincidence given that Lanny Breuer was rather clearly identified in the program – which he participated in – as the person unwilling to go forward with Wall Street prosecutions out of both a fear of losing the cases and some strange fixation on the possibility the firms engaging in criminal fraud might go out of business.

Aaron Schwartz isn’t the first victim nor, sadly, will he be the last. His death is the terrible toll of a ruthless government intent on protecting a secretive and unaccountable kleptocracy at all costs.

The Federal Trade Commission’s settlement with Google fails to end its most anticompetitive practice, Consumer Watchdog said today and the public interest group called on the Department of Justice and state attorneys general to press forward to end the Internet giant’s monopolistic behavior in search results.

“Google clearly skews search results to favor its own products and services while portraying the results as unbiased. That undermines competition and hurts consumers,” said John M. Simpson, director of the group’s Privacy Project. “The FTC rolled over for Google.

The utterly incompetent prosecutors at the Department of Justice politely decline to indict HBSC or any of its present or former employees. Because, you know, things like this just happen and besides some of the responsible people don’t live here, and some of them got fired and others lost their bonuses, which is punishment enough. And anyway, we can’t indict unless we find evidence that someone specifically intended to aid money laundering.

Google is out there whispering in the ears of journalists that they are off the hook for search manipulation and that there are three solid votes in opposition to the FTC pursuing the case. Perhaps they know things nobody else does, but if it’s true, it will raise all kinds of questions about the agency’s balk, particularly with regard to commissioner Edith Ramirez.

It’s expected that Liebowitz will leave the FTC by the end of the year, and he’d like to wrap up the Google antitrust case before he does. But if he decides that his swan song will be another softball settlement for Google, his legacy at the FTC would likely be the agency’s irrelevance in the digital age.

On Friday, Consumer Watchdog will get their day in court as they oppose the proposed settlement between Google and the FTC over the Safari browser hack, wherein Google allegedly violated the consent decree they signed with the FTC in the “Google Buzz” case.