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Nation Topics - The Constitution

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Digital surveillance

Search engine executives warn about invasive government surveillance, but the digital arms trade begins with their own technologies.

Guantánamo Bay detention center

That’s the unanimous conclusion of a nonpartisan task force. It should teach us not to overreact to the Boston bombings.

Proposition 8 opponents

Gay rights advocates were hoping that the Court would issue a broad ruling, but the justices seem most concerned with issues of standing.

Clarence Earl Gideon

In its historic decision, the Supreme Court ruled that poor people have a right to a lawyer. But today, our system of indigent defense is shameful.

Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama

Section 5 is as necessary today as it was in 1965, when Alabama state troopers beat freedom marchers in Selma.

Ballot

How many dysfunctional election cycles are we going to endure before we accept the necessity of this reform?

Barack Obama

Even if we like President Obama, do we want him to be a one-man death panel?

Barack Obama

There are many measures the president could take to restore civil liberties—if he wanted to.

When The New York Times first revealed the NSA was wiretapping Americans without a warrant in 2005, it was a scandal. But the government continues to spy with impunity—and what was once illegal has become the law.

Barack Obama

How did a community organizer and a constitutional law professor become an extrajudicial, drone-happy president? 

Blogs

After the news broke that the NYPD had been monitoring them, NYU's Islamic Student Association gathered to demand the university president condemn the operation.

June 26, 2012

It depends on which cable news channel you glanced at this morning. 

June 25, 2012

As America awaits the Supreme Court’s decision on healthcare, it’s important to remember that what’s really on trial is humanity itself. 

June 18, 2012

What’s next for the Defense of Marriage Act?

June 1, 2012

What if the justices scrap healthcare reform as the Obama administration imagines it? What if they don't? Nurses say the healthcare crisis will still demand real reform.

March 27, 2012

The Republican base is just as likely to be outraged by a decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. 

September 28, 2011

With a decision barring matching funds to counter attack ads from privately funded candidates, the court has undermined one of the last tools for fair elections.

June 27, 2011

The plan to renew the Patriot Act may have the backing of Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders and the Obama White House. But this is bad bipartisanship.

May 23, 2011

The 14th amendment has done it again! No wonder right wing radicals want to repeal it.

August 5, 2010

As someone who has written several books and dozens of major articles on judicial interventions in our politics, and who has covered literally hundreds of campaigns in every state of the country, I have made no secret about my sense that the best response to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to let corporations spend freely on campaigns is a constitutional amendment to protect our democracy from being overwhelmed with corporate cash.

February 11, 2010