NSA apologists say spying is only used for menaces like "weapons of mass destruction" and "terror." But those terms have been radically redefined.

One of the assurances I keep hearing about the U.S. government's spying on American citizens is that it's only used in cases of terrorism. Terrorism is, of course, an extraordinary crime, and its horrific nature is supposed to justify permitting all sorts of excesses to prevent it. But there's a problem with this line of reasoning: mission creep. The definitions of "terrorism" and "weapon of mass destruction" are broadening, and these extraordinary powers are being used, and will continue to be used, for crimes other than terrorism.

Back in 2002, the Patriot Act greatly broadened the definition of terrorism to include all sorts of "normal" violent acts as well as non-violent protests. The term "terrorist" is surprisingly broad; since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it has been applied to people you wouldn't normally consider terrorists.

The most egregious example of this are the three anti-nuclear pacifists, including an 82-year-old nun, who cut through a chain-link fence at the Oak Ridge nuclear-weapons-production facility in 2012. While they were originally arrested on a misdemeanor trespassing charge, the government kept increasing their charges as the facility's security lapses became more embarrassing. Now the protestors have been convicted of violent crimes of terrorism -- and remain in jail.

Blow jobs, cunnilingus and anal sex would all become illegal in Virginia if gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli II gets his way.

Cuccinelli, the state's attorney general, has made the reinstatement of the Crimes Against Nature Law a focus of his campaign, according to his website.

The law, struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2003, states: "If any person carnally knows in any manner any brute animal, or carnally knows any male or female person by the anus or by or with the mouth, or voluntarily submits to such carnal knowledge, he or she shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony."

While that includes everyone, gay or straight, young or old, married or single, Cuccinelli insists it's all about the kids. His site names 90 child molesters prosecuted under the law.

But, according to the Washington Post, he voted against a 2004 measure to amend the law so it would no longer apply to consenting adults because he said "homosexual acts are wrong."

In the aftermath of 9/11, President George W. Bush guided the Patriot Act through Congress, unilaterally expanded surveillance of Americans, amplified executive detention authority and took other dramatic measures that shifted the balance between liberty and government power significantly, in the name of national security.

After the initial Patriot Act was passed, many Democrats perceived the growing threat to civil liberties and started to have misgivings. Now, five years into the Obama presidency enthusiasm for these measures seems to be bipartisan.

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008 argued that sacrificing liberties in the name of anti-terrorism posed long-term risks. He condemned military commissions and violations of habeas corpus as serious threats to "the great traditions of our legal system and our way of life." He called the Patriot Act "shoddy" and "dangerous."

Senator Obama sharply criticized President Bush's surveillance policies as going beyond the boundaries of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment. He vowed that if elected he would run an administration of unprecedented transparency and vigorously protect whistleblowers.

President Obama's deeds have not matched Senator Obama's words. Indeed, he has raised the stakes.

I find myself agreeing with the sentiments expressed by those people chosen to appear in the mainstream media to express their opinions on the publication of a "fluffed and buffed" image of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover of a recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

That particular image of Dzhokhar is not representative of the face of terrorism, and certainly not the face of the terrorism that struck the Boston area on April 15th and the following days. I therefore also find myself agreeing with the decision of 'tactical photographer' Sgt. Murphy of the Boston police who, in an effort to "show the true face of terrorism", released three images of the badly injured Dzhokhar crawling out of the boat, sniper rifle dot trained on his head.

This, indeed, is the true face of modern-day 'terrorism':

Aboriginal children were deliberately starved in the 1940s and '50s by government researchers in the name of science.

Milk rations were halved for years at residential schools across the country.

Essential vitamins were kept from people who needed them.

Dental services were withheld because gum health was a measuring tool for scientists and dental care would distort research.

For over a decade, aboriginal children and adults were unknowingly subjected to nutritional experiments by Canadian government bureaucrats.

This disturbing look into government policy toward aboriginals after World War II comes to light in recently published historical research.

When Canadian researchers went to a number of northern Manitoba reserves in 1942 they found rampant malnourishment. But instead of recommending increased federal support to improve the health of hundreds of aboriginals suffering from a collapsing fur trade and already limited government aid, they decided against it. Nutritionally deprived aboriginals would be the perfect test subjects, researchers thought.

Full transcript of the statement made by Edward Snowden, in which he accepts all offers of asylum he has been given

Statement by Edward Snowden to human rights groups at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, posted by WikiLeaks:

Friday July 12, 15:00 UTC

Hello. My name is Ed Snowden. A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort. I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone's communications at any time. That is the power to change people's fates.

It is also a serious violation of the law. The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice - that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945: "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

Rick Perry has been trying every trick in the book to pass the new abortion bill in Texas, and now, according to Addicting Info.org, the truth behind his extreme "desperation" has been uncovered. The bill's passage would mean that his sister's company could be poised to make big money from abortions. Milla Perry Jones, Rick Perry's sister, is the Vice President of Government Affairs at United Surgical Partners International. In addition to that plumb position, she is also a board member at the Texas Ambulatory Surgical Center Society.

The Houston Chronicle reports the bill's passage would mean that nearly all of the abortion clinics in Texas would close because they would not be able to afford to transform into official ambulatory surgical centers. The bill would restrict abortions to being performed only in clinics that have this designation.

The few abortion clinics that would stay open would be the ones that already function as ambulatory surgical centers. It does not seem to be a coincidence that Perry's sister just so happens to work at a company that is already considered to be an ambulatory surgical center. She stands to profit handsomely from the bill being signed into law.

The campaign to re-open the inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly is holding a silent, gagged, protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice, London, on Thursday 18^th July 2pm, to mark the tenth anniversary of Dr Kelly's death and to demand the re-opening of his inquest.

Campaigners demand Dr Kelly's inquest, as his right under British law, to examine all the evidence, including the fresh evidence.

The coroner 'speaks for the dead to protect the living.' Campaigners demand due process of British law and transparency, for the clear establishment of truth and justice.

All single, unexplained deaths require an inquest under British law. Dr Kelly's unexplained death, according to many centuries of British law, should have been examined in a proper coronial inquest, with the option of a jury, the power to subpoena witnesses, testimony given under oath, with cross-examination and the requirement to establish suicide beyond reasonable doubt.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit has dealt a terrible blow to Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky and the other activists and journalists suing to prevent the indefinite military detention of American citizens.

Sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012 would allow the military to detain indefinitely persons who are deemed to consort with terrorists or those who commit "belligerent acts" against the United States. Journalists, whose job it is to do just that, would undoubtedly qualify, Hedges has argued.

The plaintiffs have had successes and setbacks in court.

Here is what Hedges wrote after Wednesday's decision:

This is quite distressing. It means there is no recourse now either within the Executive, Legislative or Judicial branches of government to halt the steady assault on our civil liberties and most basic Constitutional rights. It means that the state can use the military, overturning over two centuries of domestic law, to use troops on the streets to seize U.S. citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers. States that accrue to themselves this kind of power, history has shown, will use it. We will appeal, but the Supreme Court is not required to hear our appeal. It is a black day for those who care about liberty.

During the financial crisis, while Dr. Evil-ish Wall Street villains like Goldman and Lehman Brothers were getting all the bad press, pundits continually referred to J.P. Morgan Chase as the "good bank."

The myth of Chase as the finance sector's one upstanding rock of rectitude reached its zenith in July of 2009 with an embarrassingly hagiographic piece in the New York Times entitled, "In Washington, One Bank Chief Still Holds Sway." In that one, the paper breathlessly praised Jamie Dimon for emerging from "the disgrace of his industry" to become Barack Obama's "favorite banker."

Chase and Jamie Dimon kept that rep for a good long time. As late as 2011, Dimon's name was being floated around Washington very seriously as a potential replacement for Tim Geithner's Treasury Secretary post. Even when Dimon showed up on the Hill last year to testify (read: obfuscate) about the infamous "London Whale" episode, Senators on the banking committee - who, as writer George Zornick noted, had collected a cumulative $522,088 in donations from Chase - slobbered all over Dimon and shelved the important London Whale matter to ask the great genius's advice on how to fix the economy.

Well, there's some more news about the "good bank" - Chase is about to pay yet another ginormous settlement for cheating and stealing from the public. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will fine Chase "close to $1 billion" for manipulating energy prices in Enron-esque fashion in Michigan and California. The story is interesting in itself - and we'll write more about it later - but for now, it's just the fact of yet another massive settlement for this bank that's so interesting.