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Ten years after the 9/11 attacks led to amped-up government surveillance efforts, two-thirds of Americans say it's fitting to sacrifice some privacy and freedoms in the fight against terrorism.

Jennifer Agiesta and Nancy Benac, Associated Press

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Poll shows how respondents feel about civil liberties and securities

Surveillance cameras in public places? Sure. Body scans at airports? Maybe. Snooping in personal email? Not so fast.

The same Americans who are increasingly splashing their personal lives across Facebook and Twitter trace a meandering path when asked where the government should draw the line between protecting civil liberties and pursuing terrorism.

Ten years after the 9/11 attacks led to amped-up government surveillance efforts, two-thirds of Americans say it's fitting to sacrifice some privacy and freedoms in the fight against terrorism, according to a poll by Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

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• Corporate power's ascendancy over politics and society - by now mostly financial - has reached the point that both political organizations, which at this stage barely resemble traditional parties, are far to the right of the population on the major issues under debate. For the public, the primary domestic concern is unemployment.
• Third World America: One Year Later

Noam Chomsky, Truthout

“It is a common theme” that the United States, which “only a few years ago was hailed to stride the world as a colossus with unparalleled power and unmatched appeal is in decline, ominously facing the prospect of its final decay,” Giacomo Chiozza writes in the current Political Science Quarterly.

The theme is indeed widely believed. And with some reason, though a number of qualifications are in order. To start with, the decline has proceeded since the high point of U.S. power after World War II, and the remarkable triumphalism of the post-Gulf War '90s was mostly self-delusion.

Another common theme, at least among those who are not willfully blind, is that American decline is in no small measure self-inflicted. The comic opera in Washington this summer, which disgusts the country and bewilders the world, may have no analogue in the annals of parliamentary democracy.
The spectacle is even coming to frighten the sponsors of the charade. Corporate power is now concerned that the extremists they helped put in office may in fact bring down the edifice on which their own wealth and privilege relies, the powerful nanny state that caters to their interests.

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Related:

Third World America: One Year Later, Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post
I wanted the book to serve as "a warning, a way of saying that if we don't change course -- and quickly -- that could very well be our future." Well, 12 months on, the paperback version of the book is coming out and, sad to say, almost none of those troubling trends have been reversed.
Noam Chomsky | America in Decline

Recent cutbacks in Minnesota and Washington have put us on the wrong track for recovery.

Tyler Hanson, Minnesota 2020

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It looks like the recovery has been even weaker than previously assumed, according to a recent report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Economic growth, as many expected, has slowed, with GDP growth down to 1.3% in the second quarter. More surprising was the fact that the Bureau actually lowered its previously published estimates of GDP growth for 2007-2010.

The details shed light on the root causes of our flagging economy. Personal consumption expenditures, a measure of consumer spending, were revised down for 2008-2010. At the same time, personal savings were revised up. This indicates that much of the initial downturn, as well as the weak recovery, can be attributed to inadequate demand.

Current numbers reflect this as well; while personal consumption expenditures increased by 2.1% in the first quarter, they only saw an increase of 0.1% in the second quarter.

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