NSA officials set on ruining Thomas Drake's life went as far as to destroy documents that would help his defense, according to Pentagon Inspector Crane.

Crane wants the legal system to protect internal whistleblowers from being treated like Drake and Binney. He hopes that this way they won't need to report government wrongdoing to the public.

I see his heart is in the right place, but he's trying to solve only part of the problem. I think whistleblowers should tell the people what the state is really doing, because we are supposed to be in charge of the state. Accountability, in the state, means accountability to us .

The interview also reveals that the officials who are supposed to investigate accusations of retaliation (against other officials, for resisting corrupt or illegal practices) are afraid they will face retaliation for doing their job.

Unemployed people in Detroit are excluded from work by stores that require people to apply for jobs only by internet.

I am concerned that applying requires (1) running nonfree software too. And almost certainly it provides lots of personal data to data brokers

The right solution is not to require job applicants to hand over so much personal data to a computer data base. We should not allow employers to demand this.

Meanwhile, public agencies, at all levels of government, should offer sufficient public computers for people to come and use to carry out their dealings with the state.

Iran has sentenced Narges Mohammadi to 10 years in prison for campaigning to abolish the death penalty.

Unlike many other oppressive regimes, the Iranian regime does not fabricate a phony crime as an excuse. It openly admits its contempt for human rights. It is made up of religious fanatics that label disagreement with their views as evil by definition.

Professor Zaki was fired by a hospital in Saudi Arabia for doing his duty: reporting the unknown virus that was killing his patient.

The article suggests research that should be done to figure out how people catch this virus.

"Austerity" means more than spending cuts. It is a scheme to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. It includes selling everything public to the rich at a cut-rate price.

The budget deficit that is the excuse for these policies is no accident. It is the result of not taxing the rich enough.

Thus, past plutocratic injustice is being used as the excuse for even more plutocratic injustice.