After last week’s explosive revelations from The Guardian and Washington Post about the government’s massive spying and cyberattack programs, there has already been one important victory — the United States is once again debating its massive security state.

Here’s empirical data showing that. Google Trends maps news headlines over time. Here’s a headline search from 2004 to the present. As you can see, news about spying hasn’t been this high since January 2006 (approximately the time of the Bush-era NSA scandal):

MSNBC reportsAi??that “the PCCC is…marshalling an organized response.” Click here to sign aAi??Ai??petition calling on Congress to immediately investigate this surveillance and share the results with the public. Click here to sign on.

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.”

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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.

The right to vote is under attack. From discriminatory “voter ID” laws to inconsistent and unequal provision ballot counting techniques, many voters around the country — especially those from low-income or minority backgrounds who are most targeted by voter suppression — are asking whether they even have this right anymore.

To rectify this, freshman congressman Mark Pocan (D-WI) along with fellow congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) has introduced a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to a vote. It reads simply as follows:

SECTION 1: Every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides.

SECTION 2: Congress shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation.

Want to support this proposed amendment? Call the Congressional Switchboard atAi??(202) 224-3121 and ask your Member of Congress to support the Pocan-Ellison amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing the right to vote.

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Last night, almost a hundred Montanans attended anAi??early organizing meet-up in Missoula. Among the attendees were progressive Democratic State Representative Ellie Hill,Ai??Pat Noonan, Bryce Bennet, and former Democratic congressman Pat Williams.

The gathering attracted the support of 75 additional Montanans, who signed a petition in support of a Schweitzer run for Senate. Additionally, the house party raised over $1059 to put towards Schweitzer’s run that he would get on day one of his campaign.

Here are some pictures from the event:

Click here to join our Draft BrianAi??SchweitzerAi??for Senate campaign.

(OrAi??donate $3 that Brian will receive on Day OneAi??of his campaign, so he can hit the ground running.)

Jason Furman

Bloomberg reported late yesterday that President Obama plans to nominate Harvard economist Jason Furman as his next head of his Council of Economic Advisers.

This would be very bad news for progressives because of Furman’s advocacy for right-wing policies. Here’s five reasons why Furman shouldn’t be Obama’s top economic adviser:

He’s An Advocate Of Job-Killing “Free Trade” Deals:Ai??In an article in the Harvard Law & Policy Review, Furman criticized the growing opposition to so-called free trade deals — which have trade rules rigged in favor of big corporations and do not actually enact unfettered trade. He criticized this oppositionAi??as a “serious threat to our economic well-being” and offered support for more job-killing trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea (those agreements are expected to cost the United States over 200,000 jobs).
He Supports Wal-Mart’s Anti-Worker Practices: Ai??Furman wrote an article calling Wal-Mart a “progressive success story,” and praised the “progressive benefits of everyday low prices” — which are subsidized by the low wages of not only its American workforce but Chinese workers in factories earning as little as $120 a month. He said that the”mere fact that more than 1.3 million Americans work at Wal-Mart demonstrates thatAi??its compensation is at least as good as the alternatives” — despite the fact data shows that the company’s workers earn “12.4% less than retail workers as a whole and 13% less than large retail workers in general.”Ai??He dismissed criticism from progressives, saying, “Some have pointed to Costco (which has higher wages and more generous benefits), Ai??arguing that if Wal-Mart were more generous with its employees it would do better at attracting, Ai??motivating, and retaining them, increasing its total profits. I have no ability to judge whether or Ai??not this is true, …

The past six months has seen numerous one-day strikes by fast food workers across the country, in cities like Chicago, New York City, and Detroit. The point of these strikes is to draw attention to the low wages and little to no benefits that fast food and other retail workers receive.

Today, this strike wave hits Seattle, as workers at dozens of stores have started walking out.Ai??ai???Iai??i??m sick of seeing my co-workers and me essentially get pushed and pushed and barely be able to eat,” saidAi??Taco Bell employee Caroline Durocher to labor journalist Josh Eidelson. “And I think itai??i??s time that we pushed them back.ai???

Activists on the ground are taking pictures from the scenes of the strikes. Here’s a sampling:

Crowd chanting “we’ve got your back” (photo credit: @Molly_O)

Qdoba workers (photo credit: @GoodJobsSeattle)

Sign outside of a Taco Bell. (photo credit: @RaiseupMKE)

Arby’s workers on strike (photo credit: @Molly_O)

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Late last year, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) held a seven day strike that won more money for arts and music education, more compensation, funding for supplies and textbooks, among other concessions.

As the CTU strike was occurring, some commentators and Mayor Rahm Emanuel claimed that it would harm kids because it reduced the number of days they were in school. But if students were harmed, it certainly isn’t showing in graduation rates released today. Chicago Public Schools announced that it had record graduation rates this year, with 63 percent of high school students graduating. That’s up five percent from the 2010-2011 school year.

Unfortunately public education continues to face hurdles in Chicago — as the city moves ahead with plans to close almost fifty public schools. Check out our friends at Progress Illinois for updates on the continuing movement against the school closures.

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The Draft Brian Schweitzer for Senate campaign has set its first Missoula organizing meet-up for 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Montgomery Distillery in downtown Missoula. Members of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee in Montana and nationally launched the effort after Baucus announced last month that he would retire from the Senate. The committee said more than 18,000 people nationally have urged Schweitzer to run at DraftSchweitzer.com.

Since news broke that the IRS inappropriately audited a variety of grassroots tea party groups, Congress has started a number of investigations aimed at figuring out why the agency engaged in this behavior.

But a bigger question is, why did the IRS target such small, mostly grassroots organizations for audits and ignore massive political players? As the Conservative Intel’s David Freddoso points out, the median income of the groups targeted by the IRS was $16,700.

While the IRS was looking at groups with such a small budget, it ignored the groups with the most money. Here’s the top 3 501(c)(4)s from election 2012:

Crossroads GPS: Karl Rove’s dark money organization spent more than $70 million in election 2012, all of it undisclosed.

Americans For Prosperity:Ai??This Koch Brothers-founded organization spent over $33 million, mostly to attack Obama. It can be assumed much of this money came from the Kochs, but we actually have no idea where it came from exactly because it is not required to be disclosed.

American Future Fund: This pro-Romney group spent nearly $24 million, not a penny of it disclosed to the public.

Following the IRS revelations, there have been calls on capitol hill for increased scrutiny of how IRS grants social welfare tax status to groups. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) said that “we need to examine the root of this issue and reform the nationai??i??s vague 501(c)(4) tax laws,” and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) complained that “the lines blurred between [political organizations] and 501(c)(4), and [the IRS has not seemed] to have done anything about it.”

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Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and David Vitter (R-LA) have introduced legislation that would lay the groundwork for breaking up the biggest banks — a cause Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has been fighting for since she took office.

To understand why this legislation is so important even though Congress already passed into law a financial reform bill, recall that the biggest so-called “too big to fail” banks on Wall Street are now actually bigger than they were during the financial crisis where they were bailed out.

Neil Barofsky, a New York University academic who served as the watchdog for the Trouble Asset Relief Program (the bank bailout), appeared on CNN last fall and explained how the banks are bigger than ever and that they continue to believe they’ll be bailed out if they fail:

BAROFSKY: If you just look at the map, the fact is the banks are 20 to 25 percent bigger than they were before the crisis. And that we haven’t changed the incentives. The way the incentives are “too big to fail” because of the presumption of bailout is it drives these institutions into taking more and more bigger and bigger risks. Again, the presumptions are they’ll keep the profits, and the taxpayers will eat the losses.

Watch it:

Weai??i??re launching a campaign to pass the Brown-Vitter bill that would break up the Big Banks. Click here to join.

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As we wrote in March, the city of Chicago unveiled plans two months ago to close over 50 schools, mostly in the poorest areas.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan has sparked fierce protests, with thousands of protesters hitting the streets last weekend to oppose the school closures –arguing that they would put children at risk by having to travel further to overcrowded schools.

But while the city insists it must close these schools to close budget gaps, it has just announced that it will be dedicated as much as $100 million in public funds for the construction of a new basketball arena at DePaul University — which is about a third of the cost of the project.

Emanuel justified such a large public investment by saying that building the arena and surrounding event center will bring “huge opportunity” to the city of Chicago in the way that it would attract business and tourists.

This statement came at around the same time the Board of Education — despite desperate pleas from city residents as, Progress Illinois documents here — voted in favor of the mayor’s plan to shutter 50 schools. The Board, it should be noted, is not elected like it is in some municipalities. It was appointed by Mayor Emanuel.

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Yesterday, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) aggressively questioned Treasury Secretary Jack Lew about efforts to break up so-called “too big to fail” banks. She noted that under the previous Treasury Secretary, the administration failed to support a Senate amendment to break up these banks.

She then probed Lew about if he would support such efforts.

LEW: I think we’re on a path now which is the right path, which is to implement Dodd-Frank and then to take stock when we’re done implementing Dodd-Frank. […]

WARREN: Ai??The question is though, Secretary Lew, this is about concentration. We all said back in 2009, 2009, the problem that caused the financial crash in part was concentration in the banking industry. And what do we see now? We see more concentration. […] How big do the biggest banks have to get before we consider breaking them up? They’re thirty percent larger now than they were five years ago. Do they have to double in size? Triple in size? Quadruple in size, before we talk about breaking up the biggest financial institutions? […]

LEW: There are many things going on and I’m not trying to avoid addressing the question of “too big to fail,” I’m trying to address quite clearly that that’s an unacceptable policy. But I think we have to take in account all the factors that together add up to systemic risk.

WARREN: Fair enough, Mr. Lew, Secretary Lew. But I really think the evidence suggests that concentration is one of those factors. And that when we see the largest financial institutions getting bigger and bigger, it tells us we are not clearly on the path to resolving “too big to fail.”

Watch it:

We’re launching a campaign to pass the bipartisan Brown-Vitter bill that would break up …

As Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has said, the nation’s biggest banks have essentially gained “too big for trial” status, and the federal government has failed to prosecute any executive at a Big Bank for financial fraud.

While Wall Street has escaped prosecutions, thousands of Americans have been arrested in the course of protests against the banks. Yesterday, at protests at the Department of Justice, at least 17 Americans were arrested — and there were more arrests today. In October 2011, one month after the start of Occupy Wall Street, at least 1,000 Americans had been arrested in these protests. As of May 2013, that number is 7,736 — according to the website Occupy Arrests, which tracks arrests.

Help us stand with these protesters.Ai??Click here to sign our petition to the Securities and Exchange Commission asking it to end ai???too big for trial.ai???

This afternoon, dozens of homeowners who have faced abuses by Big Banks rallied outside the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, D.C. They demanded that the agency finally prosecute Wall Street banks who have become, as Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has said, “too big for trial.”

The march, consisting of well over a hundred demonstrators, started at Washington, D.C.’s Freedom Plaza. The marchers came from as far as Portland, Oregon, and large contingents came from cities plagued with foreclosures, such as Atlanta and New York City.

“We’re really excited over the last two and a half days we’ve had residents from around the country who’ve lost their homes or who are fighting to save their homes, come together toAi??commitAi??to training for change, to bring the movement back to their community, to keepAi??fightingAi??for their homes, and also to risk arrest today as we march to the DOJ and refuse to leave until we get a meeting with Eric Holder, until we get aAi??commitmentAi??that he’s going to start going after banks,” said Tim Franzen, who works for the quaker social justice group American Friends Service Committee. “And it’s not just about jailing bankers, it’s about bringing resources back into our communities. Wealth that has been stolen. Trillions of dollars of wealth has been stolen from our neighborhoods and you can just drive through them and see the consequences. The boarded up homes. People on the street. We are not on a crisis of economic resources, it’s one of priorities. And that’s what we’re here to say today.”

The demonstrators marched to the Department of Justice, where they rallied outside the main entrance. At that entrance, several police armed with pepper guns and other crowd control weapons at first pushed the demonstrators back, …

Ai??Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green was on MSNBCai??i??s The Ed Show yesterday, and part of what he discussed was the organization’s Draft Brian Schweitzer campaign. Schultz asked Green what the main difference between Schweitzer and current Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) would be. Green explained how he would have a game-changing presence in the Senate and be a bold economic populist:

GREEN: Brian Schweitzer, if he decides to run for Senate, which he’s considering, would be an absolute game changer. He is kind of a prairie populist, a farmer who ran for governor, got re-elected and just finished his second term. And his bedrock principle is standing up for the little guy against big corporate interests. That’s what he did as governor and he’s named people like Teddy Roosevelt and Paul Wellstone as his political icons. So we’re working with thousands of people across the state of Montana on a Draft Schweitzer movement.

SCHULTZ: Is he kind of the model Democrat in the middle of the country?

GREEN: He is absolutely the model Democrat. Particularly on economic populism issues. And to have someone from the perceived red state of Montana out there talking about trust busting, out there saying that the corporations own this government and we need to take it back again, will be a game changer. He will be an amazing partner to Elizabeth Warren.

Watch it:

The Draft Brian Schweitzer campaign has alsoAi??gotten local media coverage in the Missoula Independent:

ai???We look for game changers,ai??? Green told the Indy during one of several stops in western Montana early this week. ai???People who will both represent their state well and have a systemic impact on the culture of politics in Washington. Brian Schweitzerai??i??s authenticity and economic populism is something that the Democratic Party sorely needs …

Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green was on MSNBC’s The Ed Show yesterday, explaining how Democrats shouldn’t embrace politically disastrous cuts to Social Security benefits and instead should follow the lead of Sens. Tom Harkin (D-IA) Mark Begich (D-AK) and talk about expanding benefits. Green also covered the growing Draft Brian Schweitzer campaign to get the former Montana Governor to run for Senate:

GREEN:Ai??In 2012, oneAi??presidentialAi??ticket explicitly ran on the idea of cutting social safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare, and that ticket was soundly defeated by Barack Obama. He does not have a mandate to cut Social Security benefits […] We’re actually getting ready to go on offense in the Senate, rallying around people like Tom Harkin from Iowa and Mark Begich from Alaska who are not only saying these cuts are on the table, they want to expand Social Security benefits. So it’s in the best interest of the Democratic Party not just to help millions of people right now, but to make sure their base comes out and that they don’t commit political suicide by supporting Social Security benefit cuts right now.

Watch Green’s appearance:

Call your Member of Congress and ask them to sign onto the Grayson-Takano letter vowing to vote against any cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits.

Sign on as a citizen supporter of the Grayson-Takano letter.