This morning two black sedans with TSA special agents came to the Connecticut home of blogger Steven Frischling and walked out with his laptop computer. They promised to return it, but later claimed that there were “bad sectors” on the drive.

He is not sure when he is going to get it back.

The agents were looking for the anonymous source who leaked a TSA Security Directive which advised airlines to restrict passengers from getting out of their seats, concealing their hands…

In May, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General released an audit revealing that the FBI’s terrorist watchlist — the list used at border crossings, airports and other points of entry into the United States, often called the No-Fly List — often fails to include the names of those who are actually subjects of FBI terrorism investigations. At the same time, the list continues to include people who are no longer suspects — including at least one person who has remained on the …

The Wall Street Journal, Pat Buchanan and others are already condemning the Obama administration for treating Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a civilian criminal rather than an illegal warrior to whom we can presumably do whatever we please. We are in “a war,” The Journal reiterated today — as did Buchanan, debating Spencer Ackerman this morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” — and the government had better start fighting one.
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The Journal and Buchanan somehow overlook …

By Dave Johnson
Health care: huge majorities of the public want something – anything – along the lines of a “public option” or Medicare buy-in. In the last election people turned out and overwhelmingly voted in Obama, 60 senators and a huge majority in the Congress.
But after “the system” plays itself out we instead end up with government power ordering all of us to buy insurance from giant insurance corporations. It remains illegal for us to buy into Medicare because this would interfere with …

By Stephen M. Davidson
Not surprisingly, progressives are disappointed at the turn the battle over health care reform has taken. The Senate is considering a bill that is much watered down even from the House-passed bill, which also left a lot to be desired.
While both would add 30 million or more Americans to the roles of the insured, provide subsidies to make coverage affordable for many of them, and prohibit insurers from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions, they don’t do much to keep …

By Stephen Gyllenhaal
This is a despicable Health Bill, a stain on the soul of anyone who has worked on it, who supports it, who believes they have done anything right in birthing it. If there is a hell I would want everyone involved with this bill to end up in it, nonetheless…
This Bill should be passed.
Then we need to work to throw everyone out of office that claims they did a good job here. I also think we need to remember that when …

Few public figures are as quick to embrace their unflattering monikers as Sen. Tom “Dr. No” Coburn (R-Okla.).
“We’re accused of being ‘The Party of No,’” Coburn said on the chamber floor this afternoon. “I want to tell my colleagues and the American public that ‘no’ is a wonderful word.”
When your child is misbehaving, you say no. When your adolescent child is making bad judgments, you say no. When someone is stealing something from somebody else — i.e., liberty — you say no. When you’re …

By Michael Kieschnick

Somewhere in my mind, I thought that. But Jane Hamsher wrote it and that single phrase says it all. Due to the rules of the Senate and the political strategies of Rahm Emmanuel, Joe Lieberman is having the time of his life.
It is time to admit that if we play by Joe’s rules, health reform is dead. When we are reduced to Evan Bayh (!) saying lets compromise so that the perfect is not the enemy of the good, it is way …

By Mike Papantonio
“Providence” is a term we overuse to explain those times when everything works out in spite of impossible odds. But more often than not, Providence is mistaken for undeserved “dumb luck.” When Obama gave his Afghanistan war escalation speech last week, it appeared that he was on his way toward sealing both his fate and the fate of Democratic candidates running for reelection between now and 2012. In 33 minutes, he eliminated most of his Progressive base. The …

Before there was Glenn Beck, there was John Gibson, a dyspeptic Fox News host who anchored the network’s 5 p.m. block and steadily upped his outrage against liberals and Democrats. His shining moment at the network was probably the “war on Christmas” coverage of the late Bush era, culminating in his 2005 book “The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought.”
Gibson, who now hosts a radio show for Fox, is back on bookshelves …