Over the past two weeks, Republican leadership in the House and Senate drastically increased conservative distrust of Republican compromises. In the House of Representatives, the compromise version of the Agriculture Bill proved to be worse than the original, and the Senate filibuster compromise was a capitulation which we didn’t get anything out of.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has vowed to proceed with a civil rights inquiry against George Zimmerman. With all the things on Holder’s plate, one has to wonder how he has the time for it. Recently, Holder celebrated the one year anniversary of being held in contempt of congress by the House of Representatives. The Department of Justice should also open up about cases that it is stonewalling.

With Obama’s War on Coal in full display, the economic destruction the environmental movement is willing to cause to eliminate CO2 emissions and “save the planet” is becoming tragic. Environmentalists depend on two claims 1.) Rising CO2 emissions will harm the planet, and 2.) Humans can emit enough CO2 emissions to effect this change.

As we look at the coming two weeks, there are a number of confirmation votes that are expected. Gina McCarthy’s appointment to head the Environmental Protection Agency and Thomas Perez’s appointment to head the Department of Labor are the two high profile administration appointments. Also of interest are the three appointments to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The D.C. Circuit is important because it is the court that generally hears challenges to regulatory actions.

In its June 25 in Shelby County v. Holder landmark ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated Section 4 of the longstanding Voting Rights Act of 1965. In the nine states affected, this is a major change in the law. The Voting Rights Act was created to deal with the racial discrimination in the 1950s and 1960s that kept many African Americans from voting.

In releasing information on the NSA’s spying on Americans, Ed Snowden has been crucial in exposing the growing surveillance state in the U.S. — yet another invasion of privacy by the federal government. To the extent however that he provides intelligence to some of America’s worst enemies and is protected by them, civil libertarians and limited government minded Americans need to realize that he is hurting their cause.