The U.S. government this week said the head of a human-rights organization working on behalf of Islamist political prisoners was also a financier for al Qaeda. Most of the world knows Abdul Rahman Omeir al-Naimi as a Qatari history professor and human-rights activist. The Swiss-based organization he founded, known as al-Karama from the Arab word…
Read MoreWASHINGTON — A panel of outside advisers urged President Obama on Wednesday to impose major oversight and some restrictions on the National Security Agency, arguing that in the past dozen years its powers had been enhanced at the expense of personal privacy.
Read MoreOn Monday, a Federal District Court judge ruled that the National Security Agency’s collection and storage of all Americans’ phone records probably violates the Constitution and is an “almost Orwellian” system that “surely…infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.” It’s the first successful legal challenge to NSA surveillance…
Read MoreWASHINGTON — A presidential advisory committee charged with examining the operations of the National Security Agency has concluded that a program to collect data on every phone call made in the United States should continue, though under broad new restraints that would be intended to increase privacy protections, according to officials with knowledge of the…
Read MoreThe majority of Americans on both sides of the political aisle agree that Iran’s nuclear program, whether for energy or weapons, is the biggest threat facing the United States in the Middle East, a new poll shows.
Read MoreWASHINGTON — Two senior US lawmakers have struck a deal on a budget blueprint that would restore to the Pentagon’s annual budget more than $30 billion over the next two years set to meet sequestration’s meat ax.
Read MoreWASHINGTON — A group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers from both houses of Congress has come together to bash out a compromise $607 billion defense funding bill — which includes $527 billion in base funding and $80 billion for the war in Afghanistan — which they will try to pass before current funds run out…
Read MoreMorale has taken a hit at the National Security Agency in the wake of controversy over the agency’s surveillance activities, according to former officials who say they are dismayed that President Obama has not visited the agency to show his support.
Read MoreHouse Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon doesn’t look like an insurgent. The quintessential Californian – a man of Reaganesque optimism whose congressional district now includes the Gipper’s presidential library – McKeon has been a steadfast supporter of House speaker John Boehner in turbulent times. Yet, to the green-eyeshade editorialists of the Wall…
Read MoreWASHINGTON — Congress’ unfinished business threatens to leave millions of Americans — including the unemployed, Pentagon contractors and even supermarket shoppers — in the lurch this holiday season.
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