Seven House Republicans are calling for the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into whether Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied to Congress.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday, GOP Reps. Darrell Issa (Calif.), James Sensenbrenner Jr. (Wis.), Trent Franks (Ariz.), Blake Farenthold (Texas), Trey Gowdy (S.C.), Raúl Labrador (Idaho) and Ted Poe (Texas) said Clapper's "willful lie under oath" fuels distrust in the government and undermines the ability of Congress to do its job.

"There are differences of opinion about the propriety of the NSA's data collection programs," they wrote. "There can be no disagreement, however, on the basic premise that congressional witnesses must answer truthfully."

During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper whether the National Security Agency collects data on millions of Americans. Clapper insisted that the NSA does not - or at least does "not wittingly" - collect any information on Americans in bulk.

After documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA collects records on virtually all U.S. phone calls, Clapper apologized for the false comment.

The intelligence director said he tried to give the "least untruthful" answer he could without revealing classified information.

This year's National Security Agency revelations have created a firestorm of reports and debates about the state of U.S. surveillance technology and intelligence policy. It set off a brief international manhunt. Entire countries are now building countermeasures to deflect the NSA's gaze.

But at least in the eyes of Google, Edward Snowden was hardly a blip on the radar. The search giant's global year-in-review is topped by Nelson Mandela, followed by the late actor Paul Walker and the iPhone 5S. Snowden doesn't make an appearance. Okay, the iPhone and the Harlem Shake might be skewing the results. What if we just limited it to people? Still no luck. Oscar Pistorius, the South African athlete under investigation for his girlfriend's murder, ranked higher than Snowden.

Money is flooding into federal elections in the post-Citizens United era. And yet the agency tasked with monitoring and regulating all of that activity is close to crippled due to staff cuts and partisan bickering.

That's according to Dave Levinthal of the Center for Public Integrity, which released a massive analysis on the Federal Election Commission and its problems earlier this week. Among the problems with the agency Levinthal identified include:

• The commission over the past year has reached a paralyzing all-time low in its ability to reach consensus, stalling action on dozens of rulemaking, audit and enforcement matters, some of which are years old.

• Despite an explosion in political spending hastened by key Supreme Court decisions, the agency's funding has remained flat for five years and staffing levels have fallen to a 15-year low.

• Analysts charged with scouring disclosure reports to ensure candidates and political committees are complying with laws have a nearly quarter-million-page backlog.

Being a Clinton sure beats being a Bush these days. At least according to the polls.

Nearly five years after George W. Bush left office, half the public still blames the former president for the nation's economic woes, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week. The survey comes as Republicans have continued to keep the 43rd president at arm's length.

Democrats, meanwhile, have warmly embraced the family that occupied the White House prior to Bush; polling data show the Clintons are riding high.

Fifty percent of Americans say Bush is more responsible for the country's current economic problems than President Obama, the Post-ABC poll shows. Just 38 percent hold Obama more responsible. Seven percent assign equal blame.

In nearly two years of of Post-ABC surveys, opinions have barely budged. Roughly half the public has consistently held Bush more responsible for economic problems since the beginning of 2012.

In the US, the official response to Snowden's revelations celebrates journalism and calls for real change. In Britain, the picture has been rather different

What a relief. It is, after all, possible to discuss the operations of modern intelligence agencies without having to prove one's patriotism, be turned over by the police, summoned by politicians or visited by state-employed technicians with instructions to smash up one's computers.

The 300-page report into the Guardian's revelations about the US National Security Agency commissioned by President Obama and published this week is wide-ranging, informed and thoughtful. It leaps beyond the timid privacy-versus-national security platitudes which have stifled so much of the debate in the UK. It doesn't blame journalism for dragging the subject into the open: it celebrates it.

The five authors of the report are not hand-wringing liberals. They number one former CIA deputy director; a counter-terrorism adviser to George W. Bush and his father; two former White House advisers; and a former dean of the Chicago law school. Not what the British prime minister would call "airy-fairy lah-di-dah" types.

Six months ago the British cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, was in the Guardian's London office telling us there had been "enough" debate on the matter of what intelligence agencies got up to. But here are Obama's experts revelling in the debate; exploring the tensions between privacy and national security, yes - but going much further, discussing cryptology; civil liberties; the right of citizens and governments to be informed; relationships with other countries; and the potential damage that unconstrained espionage can cause to trade, commerce and the digital economy.

Freedom: It's bad enough that the president's health insurance takeover costs more, breaks his pledge of letting you keep your plan and diminishes choice. It actually restricts your travels too.

'We have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in." Those words from President John F. Kennedy in June 1963, standing at the Berlin Wall, neatly illustrated the moral superiority of the free West over the Soviet bloc.

But Americans are now about to find themselves grappling with their own bureaucratic Berlin Wall. The American Thinker's Stella Paul has exposed the virtually unnoticed fact that within the ObamaCare exchanges so many Americans are being forced into, "most plans only provide local medical coverage."

Paul warns this will have "a profound impact on the real-estate market, particularly the second home sector, and on the travel business." She interviewed one Connecticut retiree whose health required having a winter home in South Carolina. Her $450-per-month, $2,500 deductible, no co-pay Blue Cross policy that had worked well in both states was suddenly canceled.

- President: decision was step to rectifying 'unfair system'

- Each had already served more than 15 years in prison

- Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act three years ago

Barack Obama reduced the sentences of eight people convicted of crack cocaine offences on Thursday, using his power of clemency to make statement about what the administration believes is an overly punitive criminal justice system.

The president said that his decision to commute the sentences was a small step toward rectifying an "unfair system" which has resulted in thousands of inmates receiving lengthy terms, raising hopes of a renewed push by the administration to reform the country's criminal justice system.

Three years ago, Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act, a law which significantly narrowed the enormous disparity in sentences for crack and powder cocaine offences. But it did not apply retrospectively. Obama acknowledged on Thursday that "for thousands of inmates, [the law] came too late", and said the eight men and women to whom he offered clemency had each already served more than 15 years in prison.

"If they had been sentenced under the current law, many of them would have already served their time and paid their debt to society," Obama said in a statement. "Instead, because of a disparity in the law that is now recognised as unjust, they remain in prison, separated from their families and their communities, at a cost of millions of taxpayer dollars each year."

Republican state senator Dick Black of Virginia is considering running for the House seat currently represented by retiring Republican Frank Wolf. Black announced on Facebook he was forming an exploratory committee.

When Black was a state delegate, he made a speech saying he "did not know how on earth you could validly get a conviction of a husband-wife rape..."
Watch the video of a campaign ad by one of Black's opponents:

Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi is to stand trial on charges including conspiring with foreign organisations to commit terrorist acts.

Prosecutors said Mr Morsi had formed an alliance with the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Thirty-five others, including former aides and leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, have also been charged.

Since being deposed by the military in July, Mr Morsi has already gone on trial for inciting murder and violence.

The new charges carry the death penalty. Prosecutors describe the new charges as "the biggest case of conspiracy in the country's history".

Who really rules the world? This question is complex, but not impossible to understand...

In 2012, the Swiss Federal Institute in Zurich (SFI) released a comprehensive study entitled, "The Network of Global Corporate Control" which demonstrates how this relatively small consortium of corporations, and overwhelmingly dominated by mainly banks, actually run the world's corporate daisy chain. According to their study, approximately 147 corporations form a "super entity" and have control 40% of the world's corporate economy. The centre of the cartel includes the following giants: Barclays, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Vanguard Group, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Bank of New York Mellon Corp, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp, and Société Générale.

Of course, it's even deeper and more complex than that, but if you want to try an tame this beast intellectually, you have to start somewhere.World Bank whistleblower Karen Hudes provides us with a glimpse into this mega-corporate mesh means that these giants command an overwhelming amount of power and influence over global markets and economic - as well as political affairs...