“Mr. Chairman, esteemed members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, ladies and gentlemen. The transition from years of confinement in a maximum-security prison to standing here before the representatives of 46 nations and 700 million people is a profound and surreal shift. The experience of isolation for years in a small cell... Read More

As former House Speaker Dennis Hastert prepares to plead guilty in accordance with a deal he has made with federal prosecutors, most media will focus on the crimes the FBI mentioned in his indictment. Since Hastert was charged in May, the public has been shocked to learn that the former high-school wrestling coach allegedly spent... Read More

Gadzooks! They've cracked the iPhone!? If you're wondering how the NSA developed this fiendish capability, fingers are being pointed at Apple, but a trip through the Wayback machine suggests another possible culprit: From a 2011 article by Mark Elgan at Computerworld: Cellphone users say they want more privacy, and app makers are listening. No, they're... Read More

What rights do humans have? On a global scale, zip, actually. One of the by-products of an increasingly interconnected and interpenetrated world is that the difference between the way nations treat their citizens and the way they treat the rest of the world is becoming more apparent. The issue has been brought into sharp relief... Read More