The case: Citizens United. The decision: In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to limit in any way the amount of money corporations can spend on attack ads or other "electioneering communications" to sway a political race. Before Citizens United, plenty of corporate money had found its way into political PACs and other avenues to influence elections. The court also did nothing to strike down the ban on direct corporate contributions to candidates or political parties.

But the decision opened a massive loophole in our country's already-porous campaign finance system, giving corporations the green light to inject unlimited sums of cash into independent groups -- 527s and 501c4s, references to their IRS tax status -- that can intervene in elections.

After the January 2010 decision, many in the media reported that corporations may be skittish about fully exploiting Citizens United's political windfall, but that proved premature. Millions of dollars began flooding into existing electioneering like Americans for Prosperity, backed by benefactors like the Koch brothers and North Carolina retail magnate Art Pope. New groups like Karl Rove's American Crossroads and American Crossroads GPS were quickly erected to funnel tens of millions of dollars into key congressional races.

A jury in New Mexico has found a man not guilty for refusing to show his ID at a TSA checkpoint, TSA has admitted in court you are legally not bound to show ID to TSA agents, you can video tape them, and your boarding pass is enough to board a plane. A 30-something software developer, Mocek was on trial in Albuquerque after refusing to show ID to TSA officers at an airport checkpoint in that city in 2009. Officers accused him of creating a disturbance, during which he used his cell phone to record the scene. He was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, concealing his identity, refusing to obey a police officer, and criminal trespass. The case's prosecutor had accused Mocek of purposely testing the system and crossing the line, the Journal reported. The defense said TSA and police were "annoyed" with Mocek's filming, even though he was within his rights. "It is not criminal to bother the police, to annoy the police, to irritate the police or the TSA officers," defense attorney Molly Schmidt-Nowara told the paper.

NYT: 15 yrs. in prison for recording a police officer in IL: The Government can monitor everything you do and say, but if you try to record what they do, you're a felon

A Lebanese political analyst says the only thing that stops Israel from invading south Lebanon is that it knows what it would face from Hezbollah in the wake of such an attack. In an interview with Press TV, Lebanese political analyst Radwan Rizk said Israel is seriously considering an invasion of south Lebanon over concerns about the formation of a Hezbollah-led government in the country.

“What stops Israel is that it knows what is waiting for it in case of doing this move in the near future,” Radwan noted. Radwan said Lebanon needs to form a line of resistance against Israeli occupation and against those who are mulling to overpower the country and put it “under the umbrella of Israel and the United States.” "Israel is looking for an allied government taking over in Lebanon and this is a dream for it because we will never let any government by any kind of force, politically or militarily, to take over a government in Lebanon," he went on to say. “I think Lebanon will not get out of this political crisis and won't be able to form a new government until the change of power among the political parties,” he said.

Dutch media this month published articles accusing Ariel Sharon of murdering Palestinian children in Lebanon. Former officials who worked with Sharon said the publications were false. The Israeli foreign ministry called the claim "a modern blood libel." The claim first appeared in the Volkskrant, the third largest paper in the Netherlands, in an interview with the well-known Dutch-Jewish director George Sluizer. According to Sluizer, 78, he witnessed Sharon killing two Palestinian toddlers with a pistol in 1982 near the refugee camp Sabra-Shatilla while filming a documentary there. “I met Sharon and saw him kill two children before my eyes,” said Sluizer, who lives in Amsterdam. Sluizer has made several documentaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but is best known for directing The Vanishing with Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland in 1992.

I as a Palestinian and millions of other fellow Palestinians are denied the right to enter Jerusalem whose character is being transformed as the talk about more talks goes on!

Al-Jazeera just announced the release of 1600 internal and classified documents that reveal devastating information on the nature and scale of concessions offered by Palestinian negotiators. The Guardian reported that ” The overwhelming impression that emerges from the confidential records of a decade of Middle East peace talks is of the weakness and desperation of Palestinian leaders, the unyielding correctness of Israeli negotiators and the often contemptuous attitude towards the Palestinian side shown by US politicians and officials. ” I think that it spells the end of the peace process industry an 18 year sham that facilitated colonization and enriched a few individuals while destroying our lives.

Desert Peace: BIGGEST LEAK OF THE DECADE

Documents to show 'intimate level of covert co-operation' between Israel, Palestinian Authority. "Desperate" Palestinian negotiators offered Israel almost all of Jerusalem as part of a peace deal, only to see the offer rejected as inadequate, leaked official Palestinian documents show. Documents leaked to Arabic news channel al-Jazeera and obtained by the Guardian show that senior Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia made the offer to Israeli negotiators in June of 2008, at a meeting attended by then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and then Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. Qureia's offer would see all of East Jerusalem, except one neighborhood -- Har Homa -- handed over permanently to Israel as part of a peace deal. "This is the first time in history that we make such a proposition; we refused to do so in Camp David," Qureia reportedly said, referring to the peace negotiations held under President Clinton, which fell apart in 2000 with the start of the Second Intifada. In response, "the Israeli side refused to even place Jerusalem on the agenda, let alone offer the PA concessions in return for its historic offer," al-Jazeera reports.

PIC: Hamas: Al-Jazeera's papers unveiled plans to liquidate the Palestinian cause Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told the Palestinian information center (PIC) that these documents revealed the PA's attempts to undermine the Palestinian people's rights, especially the right of return and the holy city as well as its cooperation with Israel against the Palestinian resistance and its involvement in the blockade and the last war on Gaza. "We consider these documents are further evidence of the security and political decadence which the PA stooped to," spokesman Abu Zuhri underscored.

Globe & Mail: Israel rejected historic concessions, ‘Palestine Papers’ reveal "For most of the last two years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that it is Israel alone that is willing to make the hard concessions for the sake of peace. These documents show it is the Palestinian Authority that were willing to make considerable concessions."

Twitter: Al Jazeera will release the 1st of more than 1,600 documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [ Al Jazeera ].
Chris McGreal: Reaction to the leaked Palestine papers Palestinian negotiators have angrily dismissed accounts as lies, fabrications and half truths
The Telegraph: Palestinian negotiatiors 'offered Israel sovereignty over almost all of Jerusalem'
Yahoo: Leaks show Palestinian Authority working to betray Palestinians

The Islamic resistance movement Hamas strongly denounced the results of the Turkel probe into the lethal attack by Israeli troops on the Freedom Flotilla during an attempt to deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. The board released a report Sunday concluding that the attack did not contravene with international laws. Hamas said the report reveals the panel's political role in legitimizing Israeli aggression and that facts were distorted. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum confirmed his party's rejection of the board, saying it is not plausible that the offender is the judge at the same time.

"It is an attempt to display [Israel's] image as civilized and democratic and save the occupation government from its predicament stemming from its involvement in terrorist acts," he said.

PressTV: World lets Israel get away with crimes
Stephen Lendman: Gaza Flotilla Massacre: Whitewash Absolves Israel

Jonathan Pollak
Yonatan Shapira
Emily Henochowicz

Named above are three Jewish heroes. There are more, many more, but these three have one thing in common. The first is sitting in an Israeli jail for taking part in a ‘bike ride’ against the illegal actions of the Israeli military in Gaza. The second was tasered by Israeli authorities for being a passenger on a humanitarian aid flotilla to Gaza. The third lost an eye while protesting Israel’s attack on a Turkish flotilla to Gaza where 9 passengers were murdered in cold blood.

Two separate airstrikes by US-led foreign forces have killed at least five civilians and wounded several others in various parts of Afghanistan. Two civilians were killed and another wounded in a US airstrike in the eastern province of Logar. A spokesman for the Logar governor told Press TV that the victims were mine workers. American infantry took the dead bodies before leaving the area. Another airstrike by foreign forces killed three more Afghan civilians in the northwestern province of Badghis. Several others were also wounded in the attack.

Hundreds of civilians have lost their lives in the US-led airstrikes and ground operations in various parts of Afghanistan over the past few months, with Afghans becoming more outraged over the seemingly endless number of deadly assaults. The Afghan interior ministry says more than 2,000 civilians lost their lives in violence across Afghanistan in 2010.

Nearly two months after WikiLeaks outraged the U.S. government by launching the release of a massive compendium of diplomatic documents, the secret-spilling website has published 2,628 U.S. State Department cables — just over 1 percent of its trove of 251,287 documents. Here's a look at what the consequences of the cables' release has been so far, and what the future could hold for WikiLeaks.

"Damage Control by Pentagon on Pfc Bradley Manning Reeks of Outright Deception" David House.

Food speculation: 'People die from hunger while banks make a killing on food'. Just under three years ago, people in the village of Gumbi in western Malawi went unexpectedly hungry. Not like Europeans do if they miss a meal or two, but that deep, gnawing hunger that prevents sleep and dulls the senses when there has been no food for weeks. Oddly, there had been no drought, the usual cause of malnutrition and hunger in southern Africa, and there was plenty of food in the markets. For no obvious reason the price of staple foods such as maize and rice nearly doubled in a few months. Unusually, too, there was no evidence that the local merchants were hoarding food. It was the same story in 100 other developing countries. There were food riots in more than 20 countries and governments had to ban food exports and subsidise staples heavily.

The explanation offered by the UN and food experts was that a "perfect storm" of natural and human factors had combined to hyper-inflate prices. US farmers, UN agencies said, had taken millions of acres of land out of production to grow biofuels for vehicles, oil and fertiliser prices had risen steeply, the Chinese were shifting to meat-eating from a vegetarian diet, and climate-change linked droughts were affecting major crop-growing areas. The UN said that an extra 75m people became malnourished because of the price rises.

At least 31 people have been killed in an explosion at Moscow's Domodedovo international airport, the busiest in the Russian capital. The blast which occurred at one of the airport's international arrivals hall has also left 130 people injured. People were evacuated from the airport after reports of large amounts of smoke near a baggage carousel. Reports suggest a suicide bomber was behind the blast, reports say. "According to preliminary information, the explosive device was set off by a suicide bomber in the international departures hall," Interfax news agency quoted the unnamed security source as saying.

As thousands continued to demonstrate in Tunisia over the weekend against the interim “national unity” government, antigovernment protests spread to Algeria, Yemen and Jordan. State forces in Algeria and Yemen responded to the protests with deadly force. The Associated Press reported that more than a dozen people were killed in Algeria Saturday when police blocked a march on the parliament building in the capital city, Algiers. Some 300 people intending to march from the city’s Place de la Concorde to parliament were quickly blockaded by police armed with batons, tear gas and other weapons.

WSWS: Egyptian opposition warns of an “explosion of the masses”
ABC News: More than a dozen men across the Middle East have set themselves on fire, sparking protests all over the region -Video

Wikileaks has a generated a lot of furor all over the world and Russia has not been immune to the phenomenon either. Ruleaks.net is a website that puts Russian translations of Wikileaks cables online came up with something original as on 18th January, 2011. What made it an instant hit were the first photographs of a luxury mansion which is allegedly owned by Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin. While there are no solid proofs to back their claims, but RuLeaks.net goes on to say that the $1 billion palatial house on the Black Sea was made for the prime minister’s personal use.

Charles Dudley Warner said that “politics makes strange bedfellows,” but even the most cursory examination of the exciting new progressive-libertarian alliance reveals that Ralph Nader and Ron Paul, from opposite ends of the political spectrum, have much in common. Nader, the nation’s foremost consumer advocate and four-time Presidential candidate, has teamed up with Paul, the Republican Congressman and two-time Presidential contender from Texas, finding common ground in a litany of hot-button political issues.

Appearing on Freedom Watch, a Fox Business Channel program hosted by Judge Andrew Napolitano, Paul said “I believe in coalitions. They talk about we need more bipartisanship, and I say we have too much bipartisanship because the bipartisanship we have here in Washington endorses corporatism.”

Nader, who called the new alliance “the most exciting new political dynamic” in American politics today, said that a far-left guy like himself could work with conservatives like Paul because they’re “genuine libertarian conservatives and not corporatists.” The former Green Party presidential nominee said libertarians are “great allies” and that he looks forward on working with them “to challenge the bloated, wasteful military budget, to challenge undeclared wars overseas, to challenge hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare, to challenge the [invasion] of our civil liberties and civil rights by the notorious Patriot Act, and to challenge the sovereignty-shredding and job destroying NAFTA and World Trade Association.”

This isn’t the first time progressives and libertarians have joined forces. Rep. Paul and Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent Socialist from Vermont, teamed up last year to fight for an audit of the Federal Reserve. And Nader and Paul have danced before, most notably during the 2008 elections when both men called on voters to choose independent, third-party candidates. Paul actually urged Americans to vote for Nader, who was running for President.

States across the US are facing the largest budget deficits in history. Budget shortfalls in 44 states and the District of Columbia could reach $140 billion for fiscal year 2012, which begins this July 1 for most states. These huge deficits come as federal stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be largely depleted by the end of fiscal year 2011. The Obama administration and Congressional Democrats and Republicans have made it clear that there will be no federal bailout of the states and no federally funded jobs or public works programs to alleviate the crisis. These budget gaps threaten the jobs, pensions and benefits of hundreds of thousands of state workers, as well as the social services and programs provided to millions. The following are just a few of the largest projected budget gaps for 2010:

● California—$25.4 billion (29.2 percent of FY2011 budget)
● Illinois—$15 billion (44.9 percent of FY2011 budget)
● Nevada—$1.5 billion (45.2 percent of FY2011 budget)
● New Jersey—$10.5 billion (37.4 percent of FY2011 budget)
● Texas—$13.4 billion (31.5 percent of FY2011 budget)