Outside the Beltway

A story that has turned into a partisan kickball and some bad journalism have resulted in a celebrated news program getting considerable egg on its face.

A tense afternoon on Capitol Hill.

Reasonable members of the House GOP caucus are fighting back. Are they outnumbered?

Who should qualify as a “journalist” for purposes of a “Shield Law?”

Prism ain’t got nothin’ on the Hemisphere Project.

Courts gave the NSA broad powers to intercept overseas communications of Americans . . . 30 years ago.

Bradley Manning will be spending a long time at Leavenworth.

In the end, it doesn’t appear that the Boston Marathon bombings could have been prevented by law enforcement.

The government contractor that conducted Edward Snowden’s background investigation faces criminal indictment.

CNN reports that CIA is going to great lengths to keep operatives from talking about what happened at Benghazi.

A husband and wife do unrelated, and perfectly innocent, Google searches, and get a visit from the FBI.

How can anyone possibly support the death penalty?

Evidence that George Zimmerman acted out of racial bias is completely lacking, which means the Federal Government should stay out of this case entirely.

Chief Justice Roberts is the only person who gets to say who sits on the FISA Court.

Every piece of mail you send and receive is being logged by the Postal Service.

The latest NSA leaks are likely to prove to be diplomatically embarrassing.

Does David Gregory consider Glenn Greenwald to be a reporter deserving of protection, or “just a blogger” who may be a potential criminal?

A major evidentiary ruling on the eve of the George Zimmerman murder trial.

Thanks to one question from one Senator, we learned yesterday that the FBI has used surveillance drones inside the United States.

What possible value would it have almost four decades after the fact that justifies expending not inconsiderable taxpayer resources?

Exploring data from 33 years’ of FISA reports to Congress

The ACLU is suing over the NSA’s data mining. Does it really have a chance?

Not only do we not know the whole story of the NSA data mining operation, key details of what thought we knew are wrong.

Cory Booker is in the race for New Jersey’s open Senate seat, but is he really unbeatable?

Jay Stanley and Ben Wizner, privacy experts at the ACLU, argue that metadata is more sensitive than we think.

The government has your cell phone and credit card records. What can they do with that information?

Big Brother is doing more than just checking your phone records.

The NSA’s data mining project is about more than just subpoenas for cell phone records.

Set backs for Pennsylvania in its effort to reverse the NCAA sanctions against Penn State, and a new lawsuit from the Paterno family. The Sandusky story returns.

Apparently, it’s not just reporters whose phone logs the Obama administration is tracking.

I have for months taken it as a given that she went on five Sunday morning talk shows and lied about what happened there. Did she?

Once again, national security wins and privacy loses.

The Obama Administration’s aggressive pursuit of leaks is threatening freedom of the press.

It’s a mistake to think of the Bill of Rights as only protecting people who are “innocent” or “guilty.” It exists to protect all of us.

Darrell Issa’s Committee seems headed for a battle over the Fifth Amendment.

A top IRS official will reportedly invoke her 5th Amendment rights rather than testify before Congress tomorrow.