Responding to pressure from Internet giants and a growing coalition of activists, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) amended his legislation on Internet copyrights yesterday, rolling back some of the more dangerous elements. A HJC markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, will take place this Thursday, but SOPA critics are not yet satisfied.

Today a small bipartisan group of House members lead by Ron Paul (R-TX) and Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced the “Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011.”

In other words, the goal in Afghanistan is to attack safe havens in Pakistan. And that’s backed up by Spencer Ackerman’s reporting. There will be no movement of troops east, where the Taliban is dug in. Instead, the strategy will be “drones, drones, training Afghans, commando raids, and drones,” to quote Spencer. The mission has shifted to counter-terrorism, only with far more troops that you need for that mission (Sen. Coons didn’t see such a shift, but the refusal to go into the east is the tell). And the special ops forces, the JSOC guys, are being used to selectively take out Taliban to keep them at the negotiating table.

This is why the permanent bases are so important.

Antiwar Rep. John Conyers plans to try to attach an amendment to the continuing resolution that should emerge next week in the House which would “prevent appropriated funds from being used to fund any type of ground troop presence on Libyan territory,” according to a letter sent to colleagues. Conyers has three co-sponsors – California Reps. Pete Stark, Mike Honda and Lynn Woolsey – for the amendment at the outset.

This is one step along the road to the Norquistian dream of endless low taxes, starving the government of revenue, and the necessary reaction to that of cutting services.

House and Senate liberals expressed their desire on a conference call that they would vote against any set of recommendations from the Catfood Commission if they included benefit cuts to Social Security. That included any increases to the retirement age or privatization.

Would that the Attorney General cared more about that rule of law than chumming up to the opposition party.

A person facing foreclosure shouldn’t be threatened with taxpayer-funded lawsuits during one of the most difficult moments of his or her life.

After months of relative silence, House Democrats have finally begun to assert themselves on the issue of housing and foreclosures, which is directly harming millions of families and threatening economic recovery.

Adam Schiff–a CA Democrat (!)–just filed a bill aiming to not only give prosecutors 4 days to question “terror suspects” before bringing them to court, but also expressing the will of Congress to let them delay Mirandizing suspects “as long as is necessary.”