A French constitutional panel has thrown out a plan to tax the ultrawealthy at a 75 per cent rate, saying it was excessive.

The constitutional council ruled today that the highly contentious tax, which President François Hollande promised to impose while campaigning, was unfair. It was intended to hit those with incomes over 1 million euro (£820,000).

The LIBOR scandal is big, and getting bigger, as more and more entities line up to sue the bloomers off the big banks involved in the manipulation. What at first seemed almost non-newsworthy has blossomed into the crime of the century as small banks, pension funds, cities, and towns line up to try to recoup some of the money they lost during the ongoing swindle.

Small banks like the Community Bank & Trust of Sheboygan of Wisconsin are filing suit against banking behemoths Bank of America (NYSE: BAC ) , JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM ) , Citigroup (NYSE: C ) , and a host of others under the U.S. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The bank claims that the collusion of these big banks suppressed interest rates and, thus, the bank's income. Investment group Charles Schwab and the City of Baltimore have sued all 16 banks involved in the scandal under the Sherman Antitrust Act, and the California Public Employees Retirement System is currently trying to determine damages. Many more lawsuits are in the making, and doubtless scads more will follow.

A history of corrupt financial deals

Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS ) recently expressed concern that the LIBOR mess is further eroding public trust in the financial system. He is certainly not wrong, and he probably felt bold enough to make such a statement only because his bank is not suspected of involvement. Goldman Sachs is no stranger to scandal, however, and has participated in some hijinks of this nature, too. It's interesting how new allegations of wrongdoing seem to make everyone forget about prior offenses, particularly if the most recent one is of a monumental scale. The fact is, though, that these and other big banks have a history of manipulating interest rates to feather their own nests -- to the detriment of other institutions, investors, and local governments.

US regulators want to make event data recorders (EDRs), similar to "black boxes" used on planes, mandatory on all cars produced from September 2014. The move has sparked a tense debate between safety advocates and those worried about loss of privacy.

The National Transportation Safety Agency (NHTSA), which is in charge of setting motoring regulation, has submitted a proposal for public comment in the Federal Register. Currently, standard EDRs automatically collect data on a car's speed, the use of brakes, the number and seating of passengers, seat belt deployment and dozens of other parameters to help reconstruct how a car was behaving in the seconds before a crash. The data is continuously recorded and overwritten onto an electronic carrier inside the car, but when certain triggers are set off - say, an airbag is deployed - the data is saved and can be downloaded.

The recording, which is usually the last 30 seconds before any accident, is then passed onto the NHTSA for analysis, currently with the owner's consent.

"By understanding how drivers respond in a crash and whether key safety systems operate properly, NHTSA and automakers can make our vehicles and our roadways even safer," claimed Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. "This proposal will give us the critical insight and information we need to save more lives."

Supporters state that the measure merely legislates a device that has already been endorsed by car makers and drivers alike. First commercialized around two decades ago, NHTSA believes EDRs will be installed on more than 95 per cent of all vehicles manufactured next year.

Few of the opponents of the new measure disagree with EDRs as they are currently, but most say that the new law will pave way for a multitude of uses beyond the original remit.

The Senate agreed on Friday to approve an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, legislation that allows the NSA and other US intelligence agencies to wiretap conversations involving foreign citizens without obtaining a warrant.

­Despite growing opposition to one of the most notorious and secretive US spying programs, the Senate voted 73-23 early Friday to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

First signed into law in 1978, FISA prescribes how the US government collects intelligence from foreign parties that may be detrimental to national security. Of particular significance, however, is the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, or FAA, which includes a provision that puts any US citizen engaged in correspondence with a person overseas at direct risk of being spied on.

Under the FAA, the government can eavesdrop on emails and phone calls made or received by Americans, as long as they reasonably suspect those conversations to include at least one person residing outside of the United States.

In May 2012, Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mark Udall (D-CO) sent a letter to the National Security Agency asking for an estimate on just how many Americans have been targeted since the FAA went on the books. In response, Inspector General I. Charles McCullough replied that honoring their request would be "beyond the capacity" of the office, and that "dedicating sufficient additional resources would likely impede the NSA's mission."

Americans are living in an Orwellian state argue Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick, as they sit down with RT to discuss US foreign policy and the Obama administration's disregard for the rule of law.

­Both argue that Obama is a wolf in sheep's clothing and that people have forgiven him a lot because of the "nightmare of the Bush presidency that preceded him."

"He has taken all the Bush changes he basically put them into the establishment, he has codified them," Stone told RT. "It is an Orwellian state. It might not be oppressive on the surface, but there is no place to hide. Some part of you is going to end up in the database somewhere."

According to Kuznick, American citizens live in a fish tank where their government intercepts more than 1.7 billion messages a day. "That is email, telephone calls, other forms of communication."

RT's Abby Martin in the program Breaking the Set discusses the Showtime film series and book titled The Untold History of the United States co-authored by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick.

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has come under pressure after it was revealed that while he was mayor of Nantes secret illegal files were kept on homeless people - including details of their sexuality, drug and drink habits and other private details.

The files were published in Le Point magazine and Nantes UMP councillor Julien Bainvel asked if files were now being kept on more and more people now that Ayrault was prime minister.

It also brought immediate alarm from people protesting about the planned airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, near Nantes, who feared files were also being kept on them as the project was backed by Ayrault.

The files date from 2006 and contain 129 names of homeless people with their appearance, sexuality, consumption of drink or drugs - down to the tiniest details of their way of life, whether they were in a couple, if they got benefits, previous convictions...

NHTSA and the insurance Mafia want to see fines for not buckling-up jacked up to as much as $100 in order to "encourage" higher compliance with mandatory seatbelt laws.

Apparently, the $25 hit imposed at gunpoint that's the current national average fine just isn't sufficient. Neither are the DMV demerit points some states and (of course) the District of Columbia) assign if you're found unbuckled and which the insurance Mafia uses as the basis for "adjustments" to your can't-say-no-thanks, enforced-at-gunpoint insurance policy

Higher fines would improve "compliance" by 6 to 7 percent, according to (yet another) taxpayer-financed study of the obvious.

Threaten people with violence and - surprise - they'll do what you say.

But the question more people ought to be asking is whether it's right to threaten anyone with violence for such things as not wearing a seatbelt. And if that's ok, then shouldn't the system at least be consistent and hit people who don't exercise - or who are grossly overweight - with fines as a well? Call it it the Tubby Tax. After all, the same reasoning applies.

Or at least, it ought to.

NHTSA and other buckle-up-at-gunpoint advocates argue that wearing a seat belt is "safer." True enough. Just as it is also true that it's safer to exercise regularly - and to not be grossly overweight. Why, then, aren't couch potatoes and fat slobs threatened with violence by costumed goons? Is their "safety" of less importance than the unbuckled driver's?

To this day, many people identify mid-2008 as the time they realized what type of politician Barack Obama actually is. Six months before, when seeking the Democratic nomination, then-Sen. Obama unambiguously vowed that he would filibuster "any bill" that retroactively immunized the telecom industry for having participated in the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.

But in July 2008, once he had secured the nomination, a bill came before the Senate that did exactly that - the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 - and Obama not only failed to filibuster as promised, but far worse, he voted against the filibuster brought by other Senators, and then voted in favor of enacting the bill itself. That blatant, unblinking violation of his own clear promise - actively supporting a bill he had sworn months earlier he would block from a vote - caused a serious rift even in the middle of an election year between Obama and his own supporters.

Critically, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 did much more than shield lawbreaking telecoms from all forms of legal accountability. Jointly written by Dick Cheney and then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller, it also legalized vast new, sweeping and almost certainly unconstitutional forms of warrantless government eavesdropping.

As the fourth anniversary of Obama's pledge to close Guantánamo approaches, the pressure is on: it's been far too long, and the moment is now. But why is Guantánamo so hard to close?

Because it's been an integral part of American politics and policy for over a century. To understand what it takes to close Guantánamo, we should look to how we've failed - and succeeded - in closing it before.

Gitmo's "legal black hole" opened in 1903 with a peculiar lease that affirmed Cuba's total sovereignty over Guantánamo Bay, but gave the US "complete jurisdiction and control". This inadvertently created a space where neither nation's laws clearly applied: a purgatory that's been used to park people whose legal rights posed political threats. Gitmo's generations of detainees have been inextricable, if often invisible, parts of America's deepest conflicts: over immigration, public health, human rights, and national security.

In 1991, thousands fled Haiti on makeshift boats, seeking political asylum in the US. Determined to rescue refugees from certain death at sea, but unwilling to accept so many, Bush I ordered the US coast guard to take over 20,000 to Gitmo. Most were returned to Haiti. But about 200 got caught in the middle: approved for asylum, but barred from the US for being HIV-positive. These refugees staged protests and harnessed international media attention. Concerned citizens lined US streets calling to close Guantánamo; Harold Koh (then at Yale Law) organized a legal battle.

In June 1993, a US district court judge ordered the camps closed. Public attention faded, overlooking that while the ruling released the individuals, it upheld the policy, allowing Gitmo to be used for indefinite detention.

In May, O'Reilly Factor host Bill O'Reilly told Fox News political analyst Dick Morris that because he was "so far out on the limb" predicting a Romney win in the presidential election, if Obama were to be re-elected Morris would be "through" and "selling refrigerators in Topeka." Seven months later, following Obama's comfortable re-election, Morris isn't selling appliances in Kansas (that we know of), but he's the laughingstock of the political pundit class and has temporarily been benched at Fox News.

Like most other years of Morris' media career, 2012 was marked by terribly inaccurate election predictions, habitual dishonesty, and questionable ethical conflicts. Unlike most other years, however, Morris appears to actually be facing consequences and backlash for his role as America's Worst Political Pundit.

After Morris made more than fifteen appearances on Fox News' O'Reilly Factor, Hannity, and On the Record in October and early November, he's been absent from the network's primetime lineup since November 12 following reports that producers now have to get special permission to book him (or Karl Rove) on their shows. He has also been publicly criticized by numerous media ethicists from prominent newspapers and universities, countless political writers and reporters in the U.S. (and abroad, donors to his shady super PAC, and his colleagues at The Hill newspaper.

Appearing on Fox & Friends the day before the election to discuss his prediction of a "landslide" Romney victory, Morris said of the various people predicting an Obama win, "either I'm gonna have to go through a big reckoning, or they are. And you know what? They are."

It was another prediction that wouldn't shake out.