Friday, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a left-leaning advocacy group, announced a series of internet ads they would run across the country targeting Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. ai??i?? a fierce defender of the Obama administration’s counter-terror tactics ai??i?? and against Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who told reporters Thursday he was “glad” NSA was keeping tabs on phone records.

“In 36 hours, nearly 20,000 people have signed the Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s petition calling on both houses of Congress to hold investigations and reveal their findings to the public,” committee spokesman Matt Wall said.

The New York Times also ran a scathing editorial against President Obama Thursday night that accused his administration of losing “all credibility” on the issue of national security.

Today, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) — the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — issued a statement condemning the NSA spying programs revealed this week:

ai???This indiscriminate data collection underminesAi??Americansai??i?? basic freedoms.Ai?? While there are legitimate law enforcement uses for this data, the scope of the program isAi??aAi??serious case of mission creep andcreates a veryAi??slippery slope.Ai?? Gathering this data just in case it contains something useful does not qualify as an urgent law enforcement exercise.

ai???Our citizensai??i?? right to privacy is fundamental and non-negotiable. Domestic surveillance should only be conducted when there is an imminent need for information.Ai??The dragnet nature of this tracking suggests there was no such imminent threat, making this is a misuse of sections of the Patriot Act to collect the personal information of millions of Americans.Ai??The program weai??i??re hearing about today seems not to respect that boundary.Ai??It, and any other programs the NSA is running with other telecom companies, should end.ai???

Weai??i??ve launched a petition calling on the House and Senate Judiciary committees to immediately investigate this surveillance and share the results with the public. Click here to sign on.Ai??

Just hours after the Guardian newspaper reported on a secret court order that allows the government access to Verizon company phone records, progressive groups are marshaling an organized response. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) posted an online petition demanding a congressional investigation of the domestic surveillance program operated by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Last night, news broke that the NSA had requested and gained access to the phone records of millions of Verizon customers. Today, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) put out a statement condemning this massive surveillance program:

“This type of secret bulk data collection is an outrageous breach of Americans’ privacy. I have had significant concerns about the intelligence community over-collecting information about Americansai??i?? telephone calls, emails, and other records and that is whyAi??I voted against the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act provisions in 2011 and the reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act just six months ago.ai???

ai???This bulk data collection is being done under interpretations of the law that have been kept secret from the public. Ai??Significant FISA court opinions that determine the scope of our laws should be declassified. Can the FBI or the NSA really claim that they need data scooped up on tens of millions of Americans?ai???

We’ve launched a petition calling on the House and Senate Judiciary committees to immediately investigate this surveillance and share the results with the public. Click here to sign on.Ai??

The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald tonight reported that the government’s National Security Agency ordered Verizon to turn over the phone records of millions of Americans for a three-month period starting this April and ending July 9th:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largestAi??telecomsAi??providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order,Ai??a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk ai??i?? regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.

Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.

The disclosure is likely to reignite longstanding debates in the US over the proper extent of the government’s domestic spying powers.

We’ve launched a petition to the House and Senate Judiciary committees to immediately investigate the NSA’s conduct and share the results with the public. Click here to sign our petition.

Vinson’s order relies on Section 215 of the Patriot Act, 50 USC 1861, better known as the “business records” portion. It allows FBI agents to obtain any “tangible thing,” including “books, records, papers, documents, and other items,” a broad term that includes dumps from private-sector computer databases with limited judicial oversight.

The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the order as “beyond Orwellian,” and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee launched a petition to Congress.

Patriot Coal, a massive coal company that operates mines along Appalachia and the Illinois Basin, moved recently to get out of its collective bargaining agreements it has with its unionized workforce represented by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). A judge recently ruled that the company will be allowed to this, essentially giving it the ability to abandon its responsibility to workers who spent their whole lives working for the company. As many as 20,000 workers are expected to lose long-term health benefits.

Yesterday, the workers decided they weren’t going to allow their retirements to go down without a fight. Hundreds of protesters rallied outside a Henderson, Kentucky courthouse. 15 protesters were arrested, including workers from Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Illinois.

“If there is no justice, Peabody, you will have no rest, you will have no peace,” said Dan Kane, who serves as the the United Mine Workers’ secretary-treasurer, at the rally. “You may depend on the poisonous words of a judge to let you out of a debt, but let me tell you, we’ll decide when it’s over, and it ain’t over yet.”

You should follow BoldProgressives on Twitter here.

After the passing of Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) will first appoint someone to replace him temporarily and then will be in charge of holding a Senate election for a permanent replacement.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee and NJ Working Families Alliance have launched a petition and online ads calling on Christie to hold the Senate election during the November 5th gubernatorial election this year. Here’s a portion of a PCCC email sent today arguing for a November 2013 Senate election:

New Jersey deserves representation in the U.S. Senate that is chosen by the people — as many New Jerseyans as possible — in a way that does not waste millions of taxpayer dollars that could be spent on education and jobs.

Can you sign our petition with the NJ Working Families Alliance urging Governor Christie to allow voters to elect a senator duringAi??the general election onAi??November 5, 2013?

It’s been reported that the governor could push the special election to 2014 in order to depress voter turnout when he is on the ballot in 2013.

Or, he could waste millions of taxpayer dollars on a special election one month before this year’s general election.

Again, this would be so that fewer voters participate in both elections and Republicans have a better chance.

And here’s a snippet from a New Jersey Working Families Alliance email today:

New Jerseyans deserve to elect their senator this year in a way that ensures maximum participation and doesn’t waste public dollars that should be going to creating the jobs this state desperately needs.

Indeed, New Jersey’s 2009 gubernatorial election hadAi??a turnout rate of around 46 percentAi??– and this was in a governor’s race with historically low turnout. In 2010, this dropped toAi??a turnout rate of 37.8 percent.

UPDATE: Christie has announced that he will be holding …

Prior to Christieai??i??s announcement, the liberal group New Jersey Working Families alliance joined forces with a national group, The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), to petition Christie to hold the election in November.

News broke last week that President Obama will be nominating former Bush Deputy Attorney General to head the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Comey’s nomination has stirred a debate about civil liberties and the surveillance state, but one issue that has not arisen is what he plans to do about the bureau’s approach to financial fraud.

As former S&L crisis regulator William K. Black notes, the FBI’s staff dedicated to pursuing white collar crime have been greatly reduced after 9/11. Around 500 FBI white collar crime specialists were shifted to national security functions. As Black says, that was “quite understandable. But what’s not understandable is the administration refused to allow the FBI to replace those folks.”

Check out this 2008 infographic from the New York Times laying out the decline in the FBI’s capacity to pursue white collar crime:

As Comey will be faced with a Senate confirmation hearing, Senators should ask him if he plans to reinforce the FBI’s financial crimes investigators.