(photo: Shrieking Tree) It is with great excitement that I welcome you to The Dissenter, a Firedoglake blog that will cover civil liberties and digital freedom issues. It will feature regular coverage of the torture scandal that continues to wear on and the ongoing US government war on WikiLeaks, along

On Wednesday, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona renewed his push for the creation of a temporary Senate committee to investigate WikiLeaks and the hacktivist group Anonymous that would be called the Committee on Cyber Security and Electronic Intelligence Leaks.

Screen shot from the trailer of Inception     10. Black Swan   Using the ballet “Swan Lake” as a backdrop, this film intensely brings to life the reality that performers can often lose their selves when performing. Directed by Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler), Nina Sayers

On December 6th, Chicagoans came out for an Emergency Response Rally organized by the Committee to Stop FBI Repression to support activists who have been targeted by the FBI in the past months. Those present stood in the cold and condemned U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who has been directing the FBI to expand its repression of activists in Chicago.

Weeks after the FBI raided their home, two Chicago
activists, Stephanie Weiner and Joe Iosbaker, stood before a crowd of about 150
Chicagoans gathered outside the Dirksen Federal Building and declared during a
press conference they, and twelve others who were subpoenaed, have no intention to go before any grand juries and participate in a “fishing expedition.”

On the day before Thanksgiving, members of single payer advocacy organizations gathered for a press conference to voice strong concerns with a Democratic health bill that they feel fails to address the biggest problems with health care in America.

Today, the United States House of Representatives voted to end the fund Wall Street – rather than Taxpayers – would have to pay into that would serve as the bailout mechanism in a future financial crisis. In other words they voted to repeal the already meager Dodd-Frank regulations and go

Gotta go to Clooney’s house. OK, outside it. And stay tuned for some EXCITING ROUNDUP NEWS tomorrow. • Mega-banks are trying to drag President Obama’s Fed picks across the finish line, which tells you something about their quality. But David Vitter and the Republicans won’t budge on the selections, which

Setting up a showdown over federal spending, the House of Representatives today narrowly passed a bill that would replace the cuts from the defense side of the trigger, part of the debt limit deal of last year, mostly with cuts to federal workers and the social safety net. The 218-199

So earlier today I was wondering whether the LGBT-led donor boycott of the Obama campaign would continue after his shift on marriage equality. After all, his Administration still planned to reject an anti-discrimination executive order, and this, not the President’s position on marriage equality, was the nominal reason for the

We all know that we’re only at the midway point of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and that subsidies for people who don’t get health insurance at work, so they can afford to purchase their own, won’t come around until 2014. And we know that, even after the

The FDIC has put together a new format for how they would wind down a systemically important financial institution that got itself into trouble. This is part of the resolution authority granted by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. When the next crisis brings a major financial firm to its knees,