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Newly declassified documents reveal that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in Washington state was actually an informant for the US military. The man everyone knew as "John Jacob" was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. The military's role in the spying raises questions about possibly illegal activity. The Posse Comitatus law bars the use of the armed forces for law enforcement inside the United States. The Fort Lewis military base denied our request for an interview. But in a statement to Democracy Now!, the base's Public Affairs office publicly acknowledged for the first time that Towery is a military operative. "This could be one of the key revelations of this era," said Eileen Clancy, who has closely tracked government spying on activist organizations. [includes rush transcript]

On its very face, this is also a flagrant violation of the 5th amendment. Any census form that goes beyond asking how many people live in the residence is a violation of the 5th amendment, and court cases have established this, yet the census becomes more and more invasive each time.

A rather surprising finding from the newly released CNN poll. Question three on the national survey of 1,136 adults (which includes an oversample of African-Americans) asks, "Do you consider the first six months of the Obama administration to be a success or a failure?"

After four decades of urging students, hippies, communists, and agitators to come out en masse to protest the U.S. government, protests that commonly turned to violence, Democrats are at last finding a protest they don't like because, with the healthcare debate, this time it is a protest of them and not by them.