The level of soot pollution correlates with low birth weight.

The CDC was unable to track an outbreak of antibiotic-resistant salmonella because part of its operations were shut down.

Irreplaceable transgenic mice will die if they are not fed, dealing a setback to medical research.

Most of the US military is less essential to our safety than the CDC and those mice. In fact, most of it isn't necessary at all.

The NSA head has effectively admitted that the US gains no real security against terrorist attacks from massive general surveillance.

Posing the question in terms of whether massive surveillance has ever prevented any violence in the US is a gratuitous concession to the NSA.

The suppression of leaks is extremely dangerous, in the same way a nuclear power plant is dangerous: there's a small but substantial chance it will cause a massive catastrophe (fallout, for the nuclear plant; tyranny, for the War on Journalism). The September 2001 attack were a pinprick compared with this.

Even if massive surveillance prevented one attack on that scale each decade, that would not justify massive surveillance. 300 additional deaths per year, set against the population of the US, is a tiny risk. In the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, we can pay that price to maintain our freedom.

In New York City, undercover thugs infiltrate just about every dissident activity — even Occupy Sandy, which helped people who had been rendered homeless by Hurricane Sandy.

An undercover thug in California bullied vulnerable students with "special needs" into buying pot, then got them expelled and even jailed.

This is part of the school-to-prison pipeline. A school should not allow undercover thugs to prey on students.

Journalists note the chilling effect of Obama's War on Journalism.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reports on the danger to press freedom around the world — and now, thanks to Obama, in the US as well.