Here are some words of encouragement for Reverend Rick Hoyt, whose First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles leads nineteen other organizations in a lawsuit against the NSA for violations of the first, fourth, and fifth amendments:

Thank you for leading in this area. You have support from so many of us who feel powerless to stop a lawless government. I have written a lot about civil resistance, and have long thought that religious organizations can take the lead. The Catholic church helped lead with Solidarity in Poland, against the Communist state there. King and Abernathy formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the specific purpose of leading the civil rights movement in the south. Yet so few religious organizations have done anything, in public, to stop our country’s slide away from constitutional protections, toward a government that is not democratic at all. I hope many other religious leaders and congregations follow your example, and that we all understand we are lost if we don’t find good leadership somewhere.

Medal of Freedom recipient Benjamin C. Bradlee

I see President Obama plans to award the Medal of Freedom to Benjamin C. Bradlee. Check out his credentials and his association with the CIA before he became editor of the Washington Post. Read Peter Janney’s book, Mary’s Mosaic, to see Bradlee’s family connections to Mary Meyer, and to her murder in 1964. Presidents want to give this medal to people who do not deserve to be honored this way!

Remember the courageous citizens who actually deserve this honor: Bradley Manning in prison, and Edward Snowden in exile. Instead we honor people who helped the CIA subvert our democracy.