What We’re Reading: a daily round-up of quick hits, clips, and opinion pieces touching on key issues of democracy, justice, liberty and national security.
Troy Davis was executed in Georgia last night after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stay his execution.
A federal judge appointed by George W. Bush upheld the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act yesterday against a challenge by an Alabama county.
The 12 members of the Super Committee are “suddenly among the most popular people in town, with lobbyists and executives from powerful interest groups angling to schedule meetings, distribute checks at fund-raisers and deliver petitions to influence their work,” the New York Times reports.
Public Citizen’s Craig Holman argues that the debt ceiling compromise has “elevated pay-to-play politics in government contracting to new heights” and calls for full disclosure rules.
Associated Press: “The New York Police Department put American citizens under surveillance and scrutinized where they ate, prayed and worked, not because of charges of wrongdoing but because of their ethnicity, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Associated Press.”
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals will allow a challenge to the constitutionality of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.