From its inception and through several reauthorizations, the Voting Rights Act has always been a bipartisan effort. The historic struggle for individual voting rights reached a turning point on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. A group of peaceful marchers led by a young John Lewis were brutally attacked by State troopers. We call it "Bloody Sunday" today from the graphic photographs, and it became a catalyst for the passage of the Voting Rights Act. In Shelby County v. Holder, five Justices of the Supreme Court held that the coverage formula of the Voting Rights...
From its inception and through several reauthorizations, the Voting Rights Act has always been a bipartisan effort. The historic struggle for individu...
Federal prison population is expanding at a rate that is simply unsustainable. In the past 30 years, it has soared by more than 700 percent. We now spend-and this is just on federal prisons, not State prisons, approximately $6.4 billion a year on federal prisons; that is about a quarter of the Department of Justice's budget. This spending means fewer federal prosecutors and FBI agents, less funding for investigations, less support for State and local law enforcement, and fewer resources for crime prevention programs or victim services or reentry programs. The skyrocketing costs might be...
Federal prison population is expanding at a rate that is simply unsustainable. In the past 30 years, it has soared by more than 700 percent. We now sp...
On August 27, 2013, the President announced the creation of the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies. The immediate backdrop for the Review Group's work was a series of disclosures of classified information involving foreign intelligence collection by the National Security Agency. The disclosures revealed intercepted collections that occurred inside and outside of the United States and that included the communications of United States persons and legal permanent residents, as well as non-United States persons located outside the United States. A robust foreign...
On August 27, 2013, the President announced the creation of the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies. The immediate backdrop f...
Most Americans have been alarmed by the recent data breaches at Target, Neiman Marcus, and Michaels stores. The investigations into those cyber attacks are ongoing. But they have compromised the privacy and security of millions of American consumers-potentially putting one in three Americans at risk of identity theft and other cyber crimes. public confidence is crucial to our economy. If we do not have faith in businesses' ability to protect their personal information, then our economic recovery is going to falter. And in the digital age, major data breaches involving our private information...
Most Americans have been alarmed by the recent data breaches at Target, Neiman Marcus, and Michaels stores. The investigations into those cyber attack...
In the years since September 11th, Congress has repeatedly expanded the scope of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and has given the Government sweeping new powers to collect information on law-abiding Americans. Americans have learned that one of these authorities-Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act-has for years been secretly interpreted to authorize the collection of Americans' phone records on an unprecedented scale. Information has also been leaked about Section 702 of FISA, which authorizes the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect the communications of foreigners...
In the years since September 11th, Congress has repeatedly expanded the scope of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and has given the Govern...
When James Comey, Jr., now under consideration to be the seventh Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, appeared before the Committee on the Judiciary in 2007, he described a dramatic hospital bedside confrontation with senior White House officials who were trying to get an ailing John Ashcroft, who was in the hospital, to reauthorize an NSA surveillance program that the Justice Department had concluded was illegal. As Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Comey showed courage and independence by standing firm against this attempt to circumvent the rule of law. Since the terrorist attacks of...
When James Comey, Jr., now under consideration to be the seventh Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, appeared before the Committee on the...
The heroin and opioid crisis is a complex challenge. It goes into neighborhoods, it goes into communities of all kinds and sizes, in urban and rural areas alike throughout the country. The state of Vermont has not been spared. Since 2012, demand for addiction treatment in Vermont has risen by more than 770 percent. The situation in Vermont is consistent with what is occurring around the country. There are numerous stories of young people whose lives have either been ruined or ended because of their addiction. It is not possible to arrest our way out of this problem. It is not just a law...
The heroin and opioid crisis is a complex challenge. It goes into neighborhoods, it goes into communities of all kinds and sizes, in urban and rural a...
