This post explains the liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights – the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution – and provides a scorecard on the extent of the loss of each right.

Painting by Anthony Freda: www.AnthonyFreda.com

First Amendment

The 1st Amendment protects speech, religion, assembly and the press:

Fred Kaplan comments on the infamous Ben Rhodes profile:

It struck me as interesting in two ways: first, as a story of a senior staffer who has been hunkered down in a windowless West Wing office for too long; second, as the story of a freelance writer—David Samuels, the author of this piece—who has an ideological agenda to push and who hides it by hyping the importance of the man he’s profiling.

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

Do you remember all the hopes Americans had for Obama when we elected him to his first term? Painful memories. He betrayed the voters on every one of his promises. There was no change, except for the worst as Obama went on to become one of the most vicious war criminals in world history. Despite his horrific record, we re-elected him, only to have US economic policy turn against the people in order to bail out at our expense the mega-banks and the One Percent.

While celebrating V-Day (marking the day the allies accepted Nazi surrender in WWII), Russian president Vladamir Putin said that Russia is all for creating a non-aligned system of international security to counter global terror.

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,