Only in Washington, D.C. could a law designed to increase voter awareness and access to information actually be labeled an affront to democracy.

And yet that is the ridiculously asinine spectacle currently unfolding in Congress.

But don't get too eager about taking sides - for while this story involves a toxic cocktail of selfishness and greed, it is a bi-partisan one.

Full disclosure: back in January, the US Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission that corporate... READ MORE

Justice Louis Brandeis of the United States Supreme Court, in the 1927 case of Whitney v California , captured the essence of liberal thought when he stated that the "freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth." The right to freedom of speech was later recognized as a fundamental human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political ... READ MORE

It is easy for many of us to take our daily freedoms for granted. By and large, we can choose where we wish to live and work, whom we choose to support politically, and perhaps most fundamentally, we can choose to speak out on those issues that matter to us without fear of official reprisal or punishment. Such are the bedrock principles of any liberal democracy.

Thus it is all the more astounding, and terrifying, when we witness what can happen to someone in a totalitarian regime whose only "crime" is to... READ MORE