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I’ll give you a hint. In 2010, he ruled that Obamacare was unconstitutional. Yikes.

The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compels Verizon to produce to the NSA electronic copies of “all call detail records or ‘telephony metadata’ created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad” or “wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls”.

This report from the Guardian is huge.

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largesttelecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.

Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.

The disclosure is likely to reignite longstanding debates in the US over the proper extent of the government’s domestic spying powers.

I have no idea how a Secret FISA order was leaked. This is a serious, serious breach.

Update: Of course, a glowing profile from The New Republic of Judge Vinson.

Vinson—to some, a “Tea Party judge”—is a Reagan appointee and former Navy lieutenant who briefly came into the media consciousness in 2011 when he struck down Obamacare in its entirety from his seat in Florida. His much-touted Obamacare ruling was basically meaningless, with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) being weighed by the Supreme Court, but still caused a stir because of its sweeping rejection of the new law—Medicare discounts and all. (This was in the days when severability—the legally sound argument that portions of the law should still stand even if the mandate were struck down—was still a hot topic). In his opinion, Vinson also lifted language straight from a Family Research Council primer on the ACA, to explain why the government had no right to penalize inaction. He was also the source of the infamous broccoli meme—“If they decided that everybody needs to eat broccoli because broccoli is healthy they could mandate that everybody has to buy a certain amount of broccoli each week”—which followed Obamacare all the way up to the Supreme Court.

He may have popularized the broccoli meme, but didn’t create it.

Amazingly, not a single mention that the order was authorized by the director of the FBI, who last time I checked, works for President Obama.

Mike Sacks continues to tear it up at HuffPo Live. Eugene Volokh, Elizabeth Wydra, and Allan Morrison engage in a very powerful discussion about the First Amendment rights for corporations.

Mike Sacks points out that these speech arguments are used to do an end-run around economic rights arguments. Mike asked Eugene about whether the search results delivered by a Google algorithm are constitutionally protected. Eugene said that the search results reflect the creative decisions of those who designed the algorithms, which are a means to communicate information tot hte public–even if the programmer did not hand-pick the data, but designed the program that did. Further, Eugene added that the First Amendment protects the listener, not just the speaker. More here.

Stating at 5:06 CDT. I will be talking about the remaining cases for this Supreme Court term. You can listen live here.

Depends where you are. A professor has tracked how people in different parts of the country pronounce different words. In most of the United States, Lawyer is pronounced to rhyme with “boy,” (loyer). In the south, excluding Texas and Florida (not really south I’ve been told), it is pronounced to rhyme with “saw,” (law-yer). Southerners put the law into lawyer.

Click through the rest of the maps. These are fascinating.

This story was originally overwhelmed during the news-torrent that was May 2013, including stories about AP subpoenas, IRS targeting conservative groups, and other news. What’s surprising is that it took HHS almost an entire month to make this additional disclosure.

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, disclosed on Tuesday that she had made telephone calls to three companies regulated by her department and urged them to help a nonprofit group promote President Obama’s health care law.

She identified the companies as Johnson & Johnson, the drug maker; Ascension Health, a large Roman Catholic health care system; and Kaiser Permanente, the health insurance plan.

At a Congressional hearing, Ms. Sebelius said she had not explicitly asked the companies for money, but urged them to support the work of the nonprofit group, Enroll America.

The group, led by former Obama administration officials, is working with the White House to publicize the 2010 health care law and help uninsured people sign up for coverage. . .  .

Obama administration officials had previously said that Ms. Sebelius solicited donations from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and H&R Block, the tax preparation service. She confirmed on Tuesday that she had urged them to “consider making contributions’’ to Enroll America, which she described as “a private nonprofit nonpartisan organization.’’

When the Secretary of a powerful agency that regulates your business “urges” you to do something, the executives would be wise to take the hint. This is some sort of bizarre reverse capture, where the government is seeking rents from industry to support government programs!

Sebelius is less willing to toe the line of her authority in other cases.