1/3 of Americans fear they would be tortured if arrested — and they have reason for fear.

A plan shows how the US could convert to nearly 100% renewable energy for electricity and heating, by 2050, if the Koch brothers don't stop it.

Thugs are lobbying across the US to be able to conceal how they snoop on Americans.

Calling these thugs "law enforcement" gives them excessive respect, which is self-defeating for any attempt to restrain their power. It also misrepresent facts, such as that thugs frequently commit crimes, often gross bodily harm followed by perjury, and then enjoy impunity.

A free software activist finds that around half the emails he sends go to Gmail addresses, and that gives Google too much data about him.

Some people will look at this and argue that we should give up. That's bad logic. Keeping half your email away from companies that do tracking is a good first step, in any case. The point is, we need to go further.

Before we start a campaign for people to move their email to a service other than Gmail, for the sake of their friends' privacy, we need to find a good replacement to recommend. Running your own email server is good but too difficult for most people. The Freedom Box project aims to make that easy, but it isn't entirely ready.

The easiest thing would be an email service like Lavabit in a country that won't cooperate with snooping by the US government or the government of the country where you live.

US transportation infrastructure is falling apart because Republicans reject increasing the gasoline tax to make drivers pay for fixing it.

Of course, the fossil fuel lobby is at work here. Increased tax on fossil fuels would lead to using less of them, so if you aim to keep consumption at a maximum, you would naturally oppose that tax.