Research

FBI: Preventing Violence or Provoking It?

On March 16, David McKay goes on trial for a second time. The jury must decide whether an FBI informant named Brandon Darby induced McKay to make Molotov cocktails on the eve of the Republican National Convention.

Article

$260 Million for Fusion Center Analysts

Obama wants to hire thousands of intelligence analysts for state fusion centers to the tune of $260 million. Liberty Beat thinks there are better ways to fight terrorism than sifting through commercial databases, “suspicious activity” reports,…

Article

New blog on civil liberties from PRA

For the latest news and insightful analysis about civil liberties, Political Research Associates and Public Eye invite you to visit our new blog, Liberty Beat.

Anti-Union Campaigns and The Big Three Bullies

Corporate America and a well-funded network of ultraconservative think tanks and policy centers are raising tens of millions of dollars to fight pending legislation allowing union card check campaigns. These campaigns collect a majority of worker…

Abstaining from the Truth

Sex Education as Ideology

A sign board that says "Sex can wait. Your Future Can't"

Abstinence only sex education is widely spread across the United States, pushed by friends in high places, and the Christian Right.

Article

Younger Evangelicals

Where Will They Take the Christian Right?

A White man wearing a sweater, with glasses and a bandana and dreadlocks.

Last October a chartered bus rolled deep through the South, its passengers college-aged young people drawing inspiration from the Freedom Riders of the 1960s. The black vinyl advertising plastered on the side broadcast the riders’ goals, “Equality…

Christian Right Pushes Abstinence-Only Education Internationally

In 2003, the Christian Right shifted the foreign aid policy of the United States so that it promotes abstinence-only education abroad through HIV/AIDS relief grants channeled to the Christian Right base of the George W. Bush Administration. An…

Levi Come Back, We Just Can't Live Without You*

Here is another item for President Obama’s to do list: reinstate curbs on the FBI’s spying power. Attorney General Edward Levi established guidelines limiting the Bureau to American targets “engaged in or believe to be about to engage in criminal…

Homeland Security Helped Maryland Spy on Activists

We’ve know since the Summer of 2008 that the Maryland State Police spied on activists and their lawful political activities from 2005 to 2007. Troopers entered citizens into a database in which they labeled 53 individuals as “terrorists.” Now we…

Race-Based Roundup Revealed

Immigration advocates have long asserted that ICE raids at workplaces and in neighborhoods sweep people up based on race, rather than facts about individuals violating immigration laws. ICE’s internal investigation of a Baltimore sweep now reveals…

PRA in Progressive Times

His reign has ended, but Bush's malady lingers on

The moment Barack Obama took the oath of office as President, many progressives breathed a sigh of relief—however tentative—that the Bush years were finally over. But it was clear within days that the conservatives have not abandoned Washington and…

PRA Receives Major Grant To Investigate Domestic Surveillance Post 9/11

Political Research Associates, a nonprofit think tank known for its investigations of the U.S. Right and political repression, has received a $500,000 grant to conduct a multi-city investigation of how domestic surveillance changed after September…

Saving Monsignor Ryan

Refuting the Myths of Neoconservative Roman Catholic Economics

In October 1936, a Roman Catholic priest and professor of moral theology at the Catholic University of America took to the airwaves to defend the New Deal from scurrilous attacks made by another Catholic priest, the demagogic radio personality of…

Post-Palin Feminism

Sarah Palin in a white jacket, in front of a crowd, smiling.

From the podium at the Christian Right’s Values Voter Summit in mid-September, National Review Institute’s Kate O’Beirne, 59, pronounced that the “selection of Sarah Palin [as the GOP vice presidential nominee] sounded the death knell of modern…

Article

The Culture Wars Are Still Not Over

The Religious Right in the States and Beyond

In the wake of pre-election punditry that the Religious Right is dead and that the so called Culture Wars are over, I wrote a piece for The Public Eye: “The Culture Wars Are Not Over: The Institutionalization of the Christian Right.”1 The year was…

Leaderless Counterterrorism Strategy

The “War on Terror,” Civil Liberties, and Flawed Scholarship

The effectiveness of counterterrorism efforts by the Bush Administration is compromised by flawed analyses based on sloppy scholarship by Marc Sageman and Bruce Hoffman—two leading experts heavily relied on by policymakers. The resulting programs of…

Article

American Life League's Pill Kills Day Links Birth Control and Abortion

Protesters holding banners. One says I Stand with Planned Parenthood, another one says "Don't take away my birth control"

Thirty-seven-year-old Erik Martin says he got involved in the American Life League shortly after his eight and 10-year-old children came home from their Blacksburg, Virginia, public school several years ago with an illustrated comic book entitled,…

Article

Becoming a Christian Citizen

Electoral Lessons from the Religious Right for the Religious Left

The main reason why the Religious Right became powerful is not what most people may think. Some would undoubtedly point to the powerful communications media. Others might identify charismatic leaders, the development of “wedge issues,” or even…

All in The Family

Jeff Sharlet’s new book The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, is in the best tradition of American investigative journalism. Sharlet, a scholar of religion based at New York University, writes with insight, verve and…

How Roman Catholic Neocons Peddle Natural Law into Debates about Life and Death

As the rightist philosopher Richard Weaver famously said, “ideas have consequences.” And I can tell you from personal experience some of the consequences of at least one idea, that of “natural law.”

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