Last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) joined twelve of her colleagues “in sending a letter to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The letter calls for an investigation into recently disclosed NSA programs to determine whether they are conducted within the statutory authority granted by Congress and to ensure that American citizens’ civil liberties and privacy are protected.”

Now, she has upped the ante, joining a new letter of 26 Senators — 21 Democrats and 4 Republicans — in writing directly to the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in demanding answers about the NSA’s spy programs. Here are a few of the questions that the letter is asking:

How long has the NSA used PATRIOT Act authorities to engage in bulk collection of Americans’ records? Was this collection underway when the law was reauthorized in 2006?
Has the NSA used USA PATRIOT Act authorities to conduct bulk collection of any other types of records pertaining to Americans, beyond phone records?
Please provide specific examples of instances in which useful intelligence was gained by reviewing phone records that could not have been obtained without the bulk collection authority, if such examples exist.

The letter also calls out Clapper for “misleading the public” with statements saying that the NSA doesn’t hold data on US citizens.

We wouldn’t even know about the NSA’s spying without Edward Snowden’s heroism. Thatai??i??s why thousands of people are fighting back at SnowdenLegalFund.com. Click here to chip in a few dollars to defend Snowden.

Here’s a snippet from an email from Laura Davila, PCCC web developer and Texan, who joined the citizen filibuster of Senate Bill 5 in Texas this past week. Laura explains why she joined the filibuster and asks you to support Texas State Senator Wendy Davis, who waged a 13-hour talking filibuster on the issue:

My name is Laura and I am the PCCC’s web developer and a proud Texan. This week I was part of something I never expected to see in my home state.

Hundreds of us took action against anti-choice legislation by occupying the Capitol and standing with Senator Wendy Davis over 10 hours of filibuster.

Together, we stopped one of the most restrictive abortion bills in the country — a bill that would have effectively shut down all but 5 of the 47 abortion clinics in Texas.

Wendy Davis is nothing short of a hero to Texas women today.Ai??She deserves our support.

Can you thank Wendy Davis by donating $3 to her Senate race? Click here to donate.

I was lucky to watch Wendy Davis begin her filibuster in the Senate gallery. When Republicans used procedural tactics to shut down her filibuster, those of us in the gallery cheered and chanted so loud that Republicans were unable to organize the vote in time and missed themidnightAi??deadline by a mere 2 minutes.

Last night’s victory was an astonishing moment in Texas history, proving that if our representatives stand up and show bold leadership, we will help carry them to victory. But, as Representative Sefronia Thompson reminded us during the home stretch last night, “Our work has just begun.”

Let’s keep the momentum going and show Republicans that “women will not be bullied” anymore.Ai??Stand with me in supporting Sen. Wendy Davis in her next race.Ai??

In solidarity,

— Laura Davila,Ai??PCCC web developer and proud Texan

The Pennsylvania legislature is currently locked in a battle over the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, with Republicans in the state lining up against the expansion.

Last night, health care activist AJ Marin, working to support the expansion, chalked the following messages outside Governor Tom Corbett’s (R-PA) mansion:

For this act of chalking on behalf of the uninsured, Pennsylvania police did this:

That’s right, they arrested him. Here’s the arrest citation, saying he made a “derogatory remark” about the Governor:

To recap, Corbett is denying 700,000 Pennsylvania citizens access to health insurance, and Pennsylvania’s police just arrested one man for protesting that fact with water-soluble chalk.

Rep. (now Senator) Ed Markey (D-Mass.) won his special election Tuesday for the Senate seat of Secretary of State John Kerry. Markey defeated Republican Gabriel Gomez. […] Markey joins Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who used his election to put out an email solicitation for donations to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee to elect more progressives like Markey.

A grassroots movement is building excitement about former Governor Brian Schweitzer’s possible candidacy to run for the US Senate.

The movement is called “Draft Brian Schweitzer” and is being led by Billings resident Sean Whiting.

The group has three simple goals – to gather 5,000 signatures state wide, recruit 500 state wide volunteers and raise $50,000.

In asking Congress to redraw the map of places where the right to vote may be at risk, the Supreme Court tossed the ball to an institution suffering record-low approval ratings whose ability to pass any meaningful legislation remains in doubt.

[…] Stephanie Taylor, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, was less optimistic.

“A dysfunctional Congress will not provide the protections necessary to make sure all people can vote,” Taylor said. “The Roberts Court continues to ignore common-sense protections to make sure our democracy is owned by the people, not the powerful. History will not look kindly on John Roberts.”

As news breaks that Edward Snowden has been charged with espionage and has left Hong Kong, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is announcing today that we raised over $25,000 for this defense fund at SnowdenDefenseFund.com for his legal fees. This came from over 1,300 small dollar donations, with the average donation being around $22.

Edward Snowden is a whistleblower — he revealed that the Director of National Intelligence lied to Congress about whether the government was collecting millions of phone and Internet records from ordinary Americans. Lying to Congress is a crime, and this program is likely unconstitutional.

Glenn Greenwald, who broke the NSA spying story inAi??The GuardianAi??newspaper,explained Ai??toAi??MSNBC’s Chris HayesAi??how Snowden’s actions are not espionage:

GREENWALD: I think itai??i??s very surprising to accuse someone of espionage who hasnai??i??t worked for a foreign government, who didnai??i??t covertly pass information to an adversary [or] enemy of the United States, who didnai??i??t sell any top secret information […] Ai??[Snowden] simply went to newspapers, asked newspapers to very carefully vet the information to make sure that the only thing being published are things that informed his fellow citizens but doesnai??i??t harm national security. That is not espionage in any real sense of the word.

At the end of the day, this is about whether the people own their democracy. The people depend on Congress to represent us and exercise oversight. If a secret part of our government can break the law, lie to Congress, and spy on millions of ordinary Americans, than the people donai??i??t own their government.

Thatai??i??s why thousands of people are fighting back at SnowdenLegalFund.com. Click here to chip in a few dollars to defend Snowden.

Across the hall from Paul’s display, staffers from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a 1 million-member advocacy group founded by two former MoveOn.org organizers, was doing a brisk business handing out blue-and-white bumper stickers declaring, “I’m from the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party.”

Warren, the senator from Massachusetts who endeared herself to the left by pushing for student loan reform and greater Wall Street regulation, long ago surpassed Obama as a darling of the left, said Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

The thousands of liberal activists and bloggers who gathered here in recent days were President Obama’s base ai??i?? they helped propel him to victory in 2008 and ensure that he was reelected in 2012. But for many, the luster has worn off the president, with the phone and email surveillance scandal ai??i?? and Obama’s defense of it ai??i?? the latest in a lengthy list of disappointments.

“When he proposes cutting Social Security benefits, does nothing on jobs, does nothing on holding Wall Street accountable and now is spying on every American, that’s not something he can ask people who wanted hope and change to rally around,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “There are many who spent so much time in 2008 and 2012 to elect this Democratic president, and [this] is not what we bargained for.”

Texas Republicans are currently in the process of trying to passAi??House Bill 60 (HB 60), which would place a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of gestation, among other measures.

TheAi??House State Affairs Committee was scheduled to take a vote on HB 60 last night, but it was met with something the Republicans did not expect: a 10-hour long citizen filibuster by hundreds of Texans.

One by one, speakers opposed to the bill testified against it, starting around 4:45 PM. Their emotional testimonies lasted almost ten hours, ending with the committee adjourning without voting on HB 60.

PCCC web developer Laura Davila was one of those speakers who testified against the bill.Ai??”This was the first time I ever attended a political event like this, and I couldn’t have been more proud to be there. Ai??I went out last night to show solidarity with the pro-choice movement, but also to testify against the bill which our Lt Governor confirmed would ultimately shut down so many clinics in TX,” said Davilla about the testimonies last night. “Sure, constitutionally women would still have a right to get an abortion until 20 weeks after conception, but it would take hours of time to even reach a facility for many Texans, and as one man said in his testimony last night, the disadvantage this would have on women in west Texas, rural areas, the Panhandle, and the border is no different than the limitations Jim Crow laws had on the right to vote for African Americans.”

Davilla snapped these pictures at around 12:30 AM, when the testimonies were almost stopped because lawmakers claimed they were “redundant”:

Hundreds of Texans packed into the room to protest HB60.

Texas lawmakers opposed to HB60 assuring the …

“This conference is about bottom up people power,” said Adam Green with Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Green’s committee raised $100,000 to convince Elizabeth Warren to run for the Senate.

“We wanted to show her how much grassroots support would be there and it worked,” Green said.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is at Netroots Nation, and our co-founder Adam Green is on a panel titled “Weak Democrats Vs. Strong Progressives: Lessons From The Social Security Fight” alongside Ai??Reps. Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Mark Takano (D-CA) and Credo Mobile’s Becky Bond talking about how progressives build political power. Blogger Heather “Digby” Parton will be hosting, and we will use the panel to discuss how progressives have been fighting President Obama’s proposed cuts to Social Security benefits and how progressives are fighting back and even proposing to expand these benefits instead. Hear behind-the-scenes stories on power, progressive organizing, and the Democratic Party.

Below you can watch a livestream of the panel, Ai??which will begin at 7:30 PM EST today, with a pre-game conversation starting at 7:15 PM EST.

Click here to share this live stream on Facebook.

Click here to share this live stream on Twitter.

Are you a Daily Kos member? Click here to rec a diary about this event.

Click here to chip in a few dollars to progressive heroes who’ve signed the Grayson-Takano letter promising to vote against any cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits.

PCCC fellow Andrew Villeneuve will also be live blogging the panel as it happens.

Panel Liveblog

Hey everyone, it’s Andrew. Welcome to our live coverage of Weak Democrats vs. Strong Progressives: Lessons from the Social Security Fight. If you’re able to tune in to our livestream above, you’re welcome to follow along from home in addition to reading live updates here in this post. We’ll be getting started in just a few minutes!

4:30 PM: Here we go! Again, we are livestreaming this panel above. Feel free to tune in and watch from home. Heather Parton, who blogs as Digby, will moderate our discussion for the next hour and fifteen minutes.

4:43 PM: …

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) today announced that she will vote against Michael Froman, President Obama’s nominee to be the U.S. Trade Representative. Warren cited her concerns with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secret trade agreement that the administration has been negotiating that may threaten the worker and environmental rights. The administration has refused to disclose the text of the negotiations to the wider public.

“If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the United States,” said Warren in her speech. “I am voting against Mr. Froman’s nomination later today because I believe we need a new direction from the Trade Representative — A direction that prioritizes transparency and public debate,” she concluded.Ai??Read the full text of her speech below the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAgJaIwdXLI

FULL TEXT:

Thank you Mr. President.

I rise today to talk about trade agreements and the impact they have on our economy. Trade agreements affect access to foreign markets and our level of imports and exports.Ai?? They also affect a wide variety of public policy issues – everything from wages, jobs, the environment, and the Internet — to monetary policy, pharmaceuticals, and financial services.

Many people are deeply interested in tracking the trajectory of trade negotiations, but if they do not have reasonable access to see the terms of the agreements under negotiation, then they can’t have real input.Ai?? Without transparency, the benefits from an open marketplaces of ideas are reduced enormously.

I am deeply concerned about the transparency record of the US Trade Representative and with one ongoing trade agreement in particular — the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

For months, the Trade Representative who negotiates on our behalf has been unwilling to provide any public access to the composite bracketed text relating to the negotiations.Ai?? The composite bracketed text includes proposed language from …

Since Glenn Greenwald’s blockbuster story on indiscriminate NSA spying on phone and Internet records, there has been appropriate outrage about American privacy and basic fourth amendment freedoms.

But there has been less attention on the fact that the national security state, largely through its outsourcing to private intelligence and defense contractors like Edward Snowden’s former employer Booz Allen Hamilton, has basically become a welfare program for the very rich. Here are a few numbers showing how:

$763,000: That’s the reimbursement cap for defense contractors — almost twice what President Barack Obama makes and over three times what vice president Joe Biden makes. Repeated attempts to lower this cap have failed.
3.2 Percent: That’s the unemployment rate in Arlington County, Virginia, the hub of the intelligence contractor state and location of the headquarters of Booz Allen Hamilton. InAi??In January 2010, during the height of the recession, the widerAi??United States had an unemployment rate of 9.8%, while ArlingtonAi??maintained an unemployment rate of only 5.1%.
50-60 Percent:Ai??In 2007,Ai??that was the estimated percentageAi??of “the workforce of the CIA’s most important directorate, the National Clandestine Service (NCS), responsible for the gathering of human intelligence,” that was “composed of employees of for-profit corporations.”
70 Percent: That’s the percentage of the intelligence community’s secret budget that has gone to private contractors, despite the fact that only one in four intelligence workers is a contractor — a sign that the privatization of the security state is driving up costs.
$107Ai??million: The amount the top executives at the top five Pentagon contractors made. That’s “43Ai??percent more than the heads of the five biggest U.S. banks, who made $75Ai??million.”
$20 Million:Ai??That’s the compensation of Booz Allen Hamilton’s top five employees in the 2010 fiscal year. TheAi??Washington Post reportsAi??that the “Ai??vast majority of” the company’s revenue “about 98 percent…comes …

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a political-action committee based in Washington, D.C., is leading an active “draft Schweitzer” movement, rounding up money and supporters. The group’s co-founder, Adam Green, visited with Schweitzer in Montana in May, and the group is buying Internet ads in Montana saying “Draft Brian Schweitzer for Senate!” So far, PCCC has raised $29,000 dedicated to helping the Schweitzer Senate campaign, signed up 415 people who say they’ll work as volunteers on the campaign and had nearly 18,300 people sign an on-line petition urging Schweitzer to run.

Yesterday, eight progressive organizations — the Progressive Change Campaign Committee,Ai??MoveOn, DFA, CREDO, Rebuild the Dream, Wolf PAC, Working Families Organization, and Daily Kos — sent an open letter to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rep. John B. LarsonAi??(D-CT), chairman of theAi??House Democrats’ Task Force on Election Reform, and Ranking Member Robert Brady (D-PA)Ai??urging them to take up legislation to create real citizen-funded elections — and not a weaker system that would reward candidates who continue to rake in big-dollar contributions. The letter reads as follows:

Leader Pelosi, Representative Larson, and Ranking Member Brady:

We have been following the work of the Task Force on Election Reform. We write to applaud your leadership and attention to the critical issue of campaign finance reform ai??i?? and to inform you that we stand ready to mobilize millions of Americans around strong legislation that brings forth citizen-funded elections for Congress.

For us, the goal of such legislation is to increase the power of ordinary Americans in our democracy and to incentivize candidates to spend their time talking with ordinary Americans instead of special-interest donors. We ask you to put the full weight of Democratic Leadership behind a bill that achieves those goals ai??i?? a bill such asAi??The Fair Elections Now Act (HR 269, Yarmuth)Ai??andAi??Grassroots Democracy Act (HR 268, Sarbanes).

While these two bills have differences, their core similarity is that they create a robust system of matching funds for candidates who opt to only raise small-dollar donations. This would be game changing. Candidates would be incentivized to spend their time courting ordinary Americans and would have dramatically less incentive to court big-money, special-interest donors. We understand that progress is being made on merging these bills into one, and we look forward to rallying the public around such a bill.

We cannot get behind …

The Obama administration is currently working with numerous countries to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) a massive new trade agreement. Labor, environmental, and human rights groups worry that this trade deal may undermine financial regulation, offshore American jobs, reduce environmental protections, and decrease access to medicine.

The best way to ensure this does not happen is to let Americans know what’s happening in the negotiations. Unfortunately, while over 600 corporate advisors have access to these negotiations, most Members of Congress, the public, journalists, and civil society do not.

Today, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called on U.S. Trade Representative nominee Michael Froman to reveal these secret trade negotiations by revealing the bracket text of the agreement or at least provide information on the level of detail on negotiations made available to advisory committees. From the text of a press release from Warren’s office, detailing a letter to Froman:

United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) today, in a letter to United States Trade Representative (USTR) nominee Michael Froman, called on his support for increased transparency in trade negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Sen. Warren expressed concerns about the Administration’s record of transparency specifically during the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.

“If members of the public do not have reasonable access to the terms of the agreements under negotiation, then they are unable to offer real input into the process,” Senator Warren wrote in the letter. “Without transparency, the benefit from robust democratic participation – an open marketplace of ideas – is considerably reduced.”

Sen. Warren highlights the Administration’s unwillingness to provide to the public composite bracketed text relating to the negotiations. This text includes proposed language from the United States and other countries, and serves as the focal point for negotiations. She noted that the Bush Administration, while not embracing full transparency, at least released a scrubbed …

The concern that Cuomo isnai??i??t really one of them continues to this month as the left presses him on passing a system of publicly financed political campaigns. Cuomo unveiled the bill for elections reform this week and it includes a $41 million public system thatai??i??s similar to New York Cityai??i??s program. Still, this the $20 million man trying to get the money out of politics, a governor who has assembled a massive war chest from a variety of interests while also backing an overhaul of the very system heai??i??s so thrives in.

Itai??i??s a dissonant note for some. So thatai??i??s why a liberal group, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, is unveiling today a petition to pressure singer Paul Simon, who is slated to perform at a high-dollar Cuomo fundraiser, to support publicly financed elections.

A coalition of progressive leaders, including MoveOn.org Executive Director Anna Galland, Rebuild the Dream President Van Jones and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas are pressuring Democratic House leaders crafting campaign finance reform legislation to be introduced this year…Signing the letter, along with Galland, Jones and Moulitsas, are Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founders Stephanie Taylor and Adam Green, Democracy for America chair Jim Dean, CREDO CEO Michael Kieschnick, CREDO political director Becky Bond, Wolf PAC founder Cenk Uygur and Working Families Party Executive Director Dan Cantor.

A group of liberal groups is out with a letter Wednesday urging Democratic Hill leaders to come to a consensus on a public financing elections bill. Currently, three different proposals are being considered — and the groups urged lawmakers to merge the bills into one proposal. At the heart of the bills is a proposal to create a system of publicly financed congressional elections. The groups — which include the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, MoveOn.org, Democracy For America, CREDO and others — support the Yarmuth and Sarbanes proposals, but they oppose the Price bill.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) is among those organizations trying to keep the National Security Agency’s phone and Internet record surveillance practices in the spotlight. On Wednesday, the group delivered a petition demanding a congressional investigation to Senate Judiciary Chair Pat Leahy, D-Vt., as well as two prominent supporters of the surveillance program, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. The petition has nearly 97,000 signatories.

The email went out shortly after midnight Thursday, a few hours after the news broke about the Obama administration’s large-scale monitoring of Americans’ cell-phone records: “You are being spied on.” It was sent by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a leading liberal organization, to its list of supporters, and it asked them to sign a petition demanding an investigation of the cell-phone surveillance. “It’s simply unacceptable,” the email said. As further revelations about domestic surveillance have emerged in recent days, the group has kept up the drumbeat. The response, PCCC officials say, has been overwhelming — a sign of the widespread liberal anger at Obama over civil liberties.

A progressive group upset with news about the breadth of the Obama Administration’s surveillance efforts started raising money Monday to help self-confessed leaker Edward Snowden’s legal defense. Snowden admitted Sunday he leaked information to The Guardian and The Washington Post about the large, classified telephone and internet surveillance programs aimed at thwarting terrorism. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee announced the initiative with an e-mail from Stephen Kohn, the executive director of the National Whistleblower Center, which has represented federal employees in the past.

Progressives have begun raising money for the legal defense of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who has admitted to leaking several secret national security documents to the British newspaper The Guardian and the Washington Post.
In an email to supporters today, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said that because “whistleblower” cases are extremely expensive to litigate, they would raise money to pay Snowden’s legal fees.

The Guardian has just published an article about and video interview with the man behind the NSA leaks. 29 year-old Edward Snowden works for the massive defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and is a former technical assistant to the CIA. Snowden explained to the Guardian that he realized he was risking extreme harm to himself by revealing the government’s spying programs, but that he wanted the public to know the truth about the massive surveillance state. “What they’re doing” poses “an existential threat to democracy”, he warned, and also said that the NSA “routinely lied to Congress,” which would be a crime.

We’re raising money for aAi??Edward Snowden Legal Defense Fund to help him defend himself and tell his story. Can you chip in $10 and tell others too?

Read more from The Guardian:

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history isAi??Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for theAi??CIAAi??and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. “IAi??have no intention of hiding whoAi??IAi??am becauseAi??IAi??knowAi??IAi??have done nothing wrong,” he said.

Snowden will go down in history as one of America’s most consequentialAi??whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world’s most secretive organisations ai??i?? theAi??NSA.

In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: “IAi??understand thatAi??IAi??will be made to suffer for my actions”…

He …