Officials said Sunday that arrests from the Occupy Oakland protests the day before could reach 400 and vowed to seek restitution from those who vandalized City Hall.

Mayor Jean Quan said the city would seek monetary damages from protesters. In addition, the mayor said she [...]]]> January 29, 2012 |  4:39 pm

Officials said Sunday that arrests from the Occupy Oakland protests the day before could reach 400 and vowed to seek restitution from those who vandalized City Hall.

Mayor Jean Quan said the city would seek monetary damages from protesters. In addition, the mayor said she would pursue “restorative justice” by asking that those deemed guilty be put to work picking up garbage and removing graffiti in East Oakland — a crime-ridden pocket where Quan has singled out 100 blocks for concentrated resources

Quan  condemned the local movement’s tactics as “a constant provocation of the police with a lot of violence toward them” and said the demonstrations were draining scarce resources from an already strapped city. Damage to the City Hall plaza alone has cost $2 million since October, she said, about as much as police overtime and mutual aid.

Police had their hands full dealing with protesters, some of whom smashed display cases, cut electrical wires and burned an American flag at City Hall.

Oakland has logged five homicides since Friday, added Oakland Police Department spokeswoman Johnna Watson. “If we have to take our law enforcement officers to pay attention to Occupy Oakland, then we are not serving the city residents who need us most,” Watson said.

News reports said 200 calls for police service had not been promptly answered Saturday night while officers were engaged in a cat-and-mouse chase with demonstrators.
Saturday’s Occupy action was publicized by the group as a planned takeover of a vacant building that would be “repurposed” as a “social center, convergence center and headquarters of the Occupy Oakland movement.” In an open letter to Quan on Wednesday, the group warned that if police attempted to thwart the takeover, “indefinite occupation” of Oakland’s airport, port and City Hall could follow.
The takeover effort was unsuccessful.

Police prevented an afternoon attempt by protesters to enter the city’s idled Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center. Demonstrators then headed to the nearby Oakland Museum of California, where arrests occurred after an order to disperse was ignored. One officer suffered a cut to his face when a demonstrator threw a bicycle at him, another suffered a cut hand and a third was bruised, Watson said. At least one demonstrator was injured.
Later in the night, marchers entered the downtown Oakland YMCA, where hundreds of arrests took place. The City Hall break-in occurred about the same time, officials said.
Throughout the action, some demonstrators threw bottles and other objects at officers. In a tactic that officials said they had not previously confronted, protesters also moved in on the police line carrying elaborate shields. One such shield, on display at City Hall on Sunday, was about 6 by 4 feet and built of corrugated metal on wood panels, complete with multiple handles. “Commune Move In” was painted on the front of the shield.
“The shields are becoming stronger, larger and more mobile,” Watson said. “We’re in a dangerous area for law enforcement…. We are being assaulted, and when we react to those assaults, we can’t penetrate shields like this.”
Occupy Oakland’s media committee issued a statement condemning the police actions, saying officers did not give demonstrators enough time to disperse before moving in to make mass arrests. Several journalists were detained along with protesters.
“Contrary to their own policy, the OPD gave no option of leaving or instruction on how to depart,” the group said in a news release. “These arrests are completely illegal, and this will probably result in another class action lawsuit against the OPD, who have already cost Oakland $58 million in lawsuits over the past 10 years.
“With all the problems in our city, should preventing activists from putting a vacant building to better use be their highest priority?” the group asked. “Was it worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent?”

In a morning tour of the damaged City Hall, Quan pointed out that a room with a smashed door and toppled soda machine is used for classes for low-income, first-time homeowners.
City Council agendas and other trash littered the floor in the building’s grand lobby. Although some graffiti had already been removed, evidence of the previous night’s mayhem was visible in broken display cases. A student art exhibit had been damaged and wires severed in the building’s electrical box. Quan said video showed that the crowd gained entry after a man forced a crowbar between the front doors of the historic building and depressed the emergency release bar on the inside.
Near the door, a more than century-old architectural model of the regal structure was toppled in its case. Oakland’s City Hall was built after the1906 earthquake and “lovingly restored” after the 1989 Loma Prieta temblor.
“It’s really a symbol of how resilient Oakland is,” Quan said of the building. “And we’ll survive this too.”

01/28/12 08:58 PM ET

OAKLAND, Calif. — Oakland police used tear gas and “flash” grenades Saturday to break up hundreds of Occupy protesters after some demonstrators started throwing rocks and flares at officers and tearing down fencing.

Three officers were hurt and 19 people were arrested, the Oakland [...]]]>  

01/28/12 08:58 PM ET

OAKLAND, Calif. — Oakland police used tear gas and “flash” grenades Saturday to break up hundreds of Occupy protesters after some demonstrators started throwing rocks and flares at officers and tearing down fencing.

Three officers were hurt and 19 people were arrested, the Oakland Police Department said in a release. No details on the officers’ injuries were released.

Police said the group started assembling at a downtown plaza Saturday morning, with demonstrators threatening to take over the vacant Henry Kaiser Convention Center. The group then marched through the streets, disrupting traffic.

The crowd grew as the day wore on, with afternoon estimates ranging from about 1,000 to 2,000 people.

The protesters walked to the vacant convention center, where some started tearing down perimeter fencing and “destroying construction equipment” shortly before 3 p.m., the release said.

Police said they issued a dispersal order and used smoke and tear gas after some protesters pelted them with bottles, rocks, burning flares and other objects.

Most of the arrests were made when protesters ignored orders to leave and assaulted officers, the release said. By 4 p.m., the bulk of the crowd had left the convention center and headed back downtown.

The demonstration comes after Occupy protesters said earlier this week that they planned to move into a vacant building and turn it into a social center and political hub. They also threatened to try to shut down the port, occupy the airport and take over City Hall.

In a statement Friday, Oakland City Administrator Deanna Santana said the city would not be “bullied by threats of violence or illegal activity.”

Interim police Chief Howard Jordan also warned that officers would arrest those carrying out illegal actions.

Oakland officials said Friday that since the Occupy Oakland encampment was first established in late October, police have arrested about 300 people.

The national Occupy Wall Street movement, which denounces corporate excess and economic inequality, began in New York City in the fall but has been largely dormant lately.

Oakland, New York and Los Angeles were among the cities with the largest and most vocal Occupy protests early on. The demonstrations ebbed after those cities used force to move out hundreds of demonstrators who had set up tent cities.

In Oakland, the police department received heavy criticism for using force to break up earlier protests. Among the critics was the mayor, who said she wasn’t briefed on the department’s plans. Earlier this month, a court-appointed monitor submitted a report to a federal judge that included “serious concerns” about the department’s handling of the Occupy protests.

#OpMegaupload links by Anonymous trick users into attacking US Govt

The latest Anonymous attack, dubbed #OpMegaupload and spread via Twitter, tricks internet users into clicking on an Anonymous link that instantly launches a denial of service (DDOS) attack on US government websites or any site of the hacker group’s [...]]]>  

20.01.2012

#OpMegaupload links by Anonymous trick users into attacking US Govt

The latest Anonymous attack, dubbed #OpMegaupload and spread via Twitter, tricks internet users into clicking on an Anonymous link that instantly launches a denial of service (DDOS) attack on US government websites or any site of the hacker group’s choosing.

Distributed denial of service attacks effectively flood the targeted websites with large volumes of traffic.

According to Sophos, Anonymous has claimed it’s attacking numerous websites in this way, including those belonging to the FBI, US Department of Justice, RIAA, MPAA and Universal.

The attack seems to be inspired by theFBI’s shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload and the arrest of its founders.

The hacker group announced: “We Anonymous are launching our largest attack ever on government and music industry sites. Lulz. The FBI didn’t think they would get away with this did they? They should have expected us.”

These attacks follow this week’s internet blackout, where thousands of sites protested proposed US anti-piracy legislation.

“In the past, Anonymous has encouraged supporters to install a programme called LOIC, which allows computers to join in an attack on a particular website, blasting it with unwanted traffic,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

Join Anonymous’ zombie army, go to jail

“This change in tactic from Anonymous, which allows attacks to be launched by simply clicking on a link, means that internet users need to be extremely careful when clicking on unknown URLs or they could unwittingly be joining this latest zombie army.

“Don’t forget, denial-of-service-attacks are illegal,” Cluley continued.

“If you participate in such an attack, you could find yourself receiving a lengthy jail sentence. I’m not sure if participants in this instance would get away with claiming that they innocently clicked on links by mistake, so make sure you always trust the links you click on, even if they’re shared by a friend on social networking sites.”

The US Supreme Court building in Washington DC. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP

Hundreds of protests and rallies calling to overturn the controversial Citizens United ruling will be [...]]]>  

Controversial supreme court ruling allowing corporations such as Super Pacs to spend unlimited money in elections to be protested in rallies nationwide on Friday

The US Supreme Court building in Washington DC. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP

Hundreds of protests and rallies calling to overturn the controversial Citizens United ruling will be held at courts across America on Friday, including at the supreme court in Washington, where the 5-4 decision took place two years ago.

As a direct result of the ruling, critics say, voters in key election states have seen their living rooms turned into warzones in recent weeks. Attack ads funded by Super Pacs have flooded the airwaves in these battleground states, baffling viewers with their lack of transparency, and sparking complaints from whichever candidate for the Republican nomination they happen to target.

Friday’s Occupy the Courts protesters and their sympathisers say the supreme court decision allowed these organisations unlimited spending power. But, with nearly a year before election day, the negative campaigning from murky backers is only the tip of the iceberg, say critics of the decision, which was delivered two years ago on Saturday.

They say that the decision in Citizens United vs the Federal Electoral Commission (FEC), which turned rules governing election campaign finance on their head, has ushered in an era of “dark money”, undisclosed donors, secretive organisations and unprecedented political money, most of it from the super-wealthy. The 2010 midterms, critics of the law point out, were the costliest and least transparent in recent history.

The majority of voters who are aware of the ruling believe it is having a negative impact on the race, according to a poll by Pew Reseach Centerreleased on Tuesday.

“The supreme court has hijacked our democracy from us and used the court to legalise the theft,” said David Cobb, of Move To Amend, a grassroots organisation behind more than 100 Occupy The Courts rallies at federal district courts. “Corporate contributions to elections are not just contributions they are investments. They are literally buying and selling legislation.”

The supreme court’s decision struck down rules that prevented corporations from broadcasting “electioneering communications”. It held that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited under the first amendment. Critics, including President Barack Obama, predicted at the time that the decision would open the floodgates for special interest groups to bankroll elections.

“In 2010, $300m was given to outside organisations to try to influence elections. That’s more than what has gone into independent organisations in the last 20 years combined. This is money from super-rich people, half of it from people that have never been disclosed,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizens. “The Citizens United decision was a message from the supreme court that Wild West rules were going to apply for campaign in election spending.”

Weissman predicted that, in the coming year, the spending by corporations would become “an order of magnitude bigger” and that “the spending of the Super Pacs is a hint of what is to come.”

In a televised Republican debate in South Carolina Monday, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich spoke out against the Super Pacs, despite each benefiting from ads run by groups supporting them. Gingrich, whose campaign faltered in Iowa after a series of attack ads funded by the pro-Romney group, Restore Our Future, described the Super Pac supporting the former Massachusetts governor as “totally secret and totally irresponsible.”

But according to the Center for Responsive Politics, pro-Gingrich Super Pac Winning Our Future has spent $4.5m boosting the former speaker and attacking his opponents while Restore Our Future has spent $11m.

Pro-Rick Perry group, Make Us Great again, spent $3.9m before he bowed out of the race on Thursday.

“These independent organisations and Super Pacs are funded by a very small number of super wealthy individuals and organisations” said Weissman. “That is a very concentrated set of donors who are able to exert a dramatic influence on the election outcome. These are not candidates, they are not held accountable.”

The relationship between the candidates and the Super Pacs behind them has been harshly pilloried by comedians Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart, with Colbert establishing his own Super Pac, The Definitely Not Coordinating With Stephen Colbert Super PAC, under Stewart’s leadership.

As of January 20, Super Pacs, organisations ostensibly not directly affiliated with political parties, have spent $33m, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, much of it by Super Pacs.

But, according to reports, the two biggest conservative forces in outside spending in the US, the Koch brothers and Karl Rove, with his American Crossroads Pac and Crossroads GPS Super Pac, plan to steer $240m and $200m respectively into the election over the course of the coming year.

“There are probably fewer than 100 people who are fueling 90% of this outside money right now,” said David Donnelly, campaigns director at the Public Campaign Action Fund, an advocacy group seeking to limit political spending. “We are seeing more organsiations many whom won’t disclose their donors. But we know that their money will come from a very small slice of the electorate. It is people with millions of dollars who are fuelling the candidates.”

While voters may have had difficulty discerning who is behind Super Pac-funded negative ads, the FEC rules require them to disclose their donors by the end of this month.

But the Citizens United decision also paved the way for other outside organisations to spend money without disclosing who their donors are. In the 2010 election, 46% of outside spending, that is spending by organisations not affiliated with political parties, came from undisclosed donors such as not-for-profit 501(c)3s.

Lisa Graves, of the Center for Media and Democracy, described these sources as “dark money”. She said: “At least the Super Pacs are regulated by the FEC. They have to disclose who is making the donations and how they are spending them. That’s how we know that the Super Pac Restore Our Future is run by Romney’s buddies. But the ones that are not Pacs, the issues ads run by 501 organisations or charities, they don’t have to disclose their spending. It’s really dark money because there’s no public disclosure of who is paying.”

Still, Weissman said campaigners face an uphill battle if they hope to overturn the decision, which would require a constitutional amendment.

“Winning an amendment is very, very difficult. But the issue is so serious and the decision is so disastrous that we don’t have an adequate alternative.”

Weissman and Cobb believe the campaign against the decision is gaining momentum.

Occupy the Courts has been endorsed by many Occupy groups, including Occupy Wall Street, which plans to rally in New York despite the fact that they have been denied permission by the city.

Fifty city councils, including New York and Los Angeles, have endorsed resolutions to have the constitution amended. The New York resolution, made earlier this month, sought an amendment so that “the expenditure of corporate money to influence the electoral process is no longer a form of constitutionally protected speech,” and called on Congress to begin the process of amending the constitution.

A group of senators and congressmen, led by Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Ted Deutch, are calling for the constitution to be amended to overturn Citizens United, and related court cases that have altered rules over campaign funding.

Cobb said: “For hundreds of years in this country it was culturally accepted that the local, state and the national government had the absolute right to enact campaign financial laws in order to regulate elections, to outlaw bribery or the appearance of corruption and to prevent fraud. There’s an acuteness of the Citizens United decision that shocked most Americans.”

Corporate supporters of Senate 968 (PIPA) and HR 3261 (SOPA) demand the ability to take down any web site (including craigslist, Wikipedia, or Google) that hurts their profits — without prior judicial oversight or due process  — in the name of combating “online piracy.” 

PIPA and SOPA about > SOPA

Corporate supporters of Senate 968 (PIPA) and HR 3261 (SOPA) demand the ability to take down any web site (including craigslist, Wikipedia, or Google) that hurts their profits — without prior judicial oversight or due process  — in the name of combating “online piracy.” 

PIPA and SOPA authors and supporters insist they’d only go after foreign piracy sites, but Internet Engineers understand this is an attempt to impose “Big Brother” controls on our Internet, complete with DNS hijacking and censoring search results. Incredibly, many Congress Members favor this idea.

<RANT>Try to imagine jack-booted thugs throttling free speech, poisoning the Internet (greatest of American inventions, the very pillar of modern democracy), and devastating one of the our most successful industries. Totalitarian, anti-American, massively-job-killing nonsense.</RANT>

Tell Congress you OPPOSE Senate 968 “Protect IP Act” (PIPA) and H.R. 3261 “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA):

• Phone your Member of Congress via nifty Progressive Change app
• Contact Senators who are refusing to meet with constituents about PIPA.
• Reverse Robocall pro-PIPA & pro-SOPA MOC + Lobbyists (More at Ars Technica)
• EFF Action Center – Strike Against Censorship – Congressional Emailer
• ECA Congressional Emailer – Don’t Censor Our Internet!
• OpenCongress Congressional Emailer – Oppose SOPA
• Generic Congressional Emailer (You’ll need your Zip+4)
• Petition Congress – Protect Innovation, Dump SOPA (Progressive Change )
• Outside the US? Sign Petition Opposing US Censorship of Global Sites (EFF)

Supporters of PIPA and SOPA: RIAA, MPAA, News Corp, TimeWarner, Walmart, Nike, Tiffany, Chanel, Rolex, Sony, Juicy Couture, Ralph Lauren, VISA, Mastercard, Comcast, ABC, Dow Chemical, Monster Cable, Teamsters, Rupert Murdoch, Lamar Smith (R-TX), John Conyers (D-MI)

Opponents of PIPA and SOPA: Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, craigslist, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, eBay, AOL, Mozilla, Reddit, Tumblr, Etsy, Zynga, EFF, ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Darrell Issa (R-CA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Ron Paul (R-TX)

Where does your Member of Congress stand on PIPA and SOPA? (Project SOPA Opera)

PIPA and SOPA Are Too Dangerous To Revise, They Must Be Killed Entirely

Congress needs to hear from you, or these dangerous bills will pass – they have tremendous lobbying dollars behind them, from corporations experts say are attempting to prop up outdated, anti-consumer business models at the expense of the very fabric of the Internet — recklessly unleashing a tsunami of take-down notices and litigation, and a Pandora’s jar of “chilling effects” and other unintended (or perhaps intended?) consequences.

Don’t believe it? Monster Cable has labeled craigslist a “rogue site,” earmarked for blacklisting and full-takedown under PIPA — resale of stereo cables by CL users reduces Monster ‘s new cable sales. (reddit).

There is still time to be heard. Congress is starting to backpedal on this job-killing, anti-American nonsense, and the Obama administration has weighed in against these bills as drafted, but SOPA/PIPA cannot be fixed or revised — they must be killed altogether.

Sen Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Rep Ron Wyden (D-OR) are championing an alternative to SOPA/PIPA called Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN) that addresses foreign sites dedicated to piracy, without disrupting basic Internet protocols, or threatening mainstream US sites like craigslist.

Tim O’Reilly, a publisher who is himself subject to piracy, asks whether piracy is even a problem, and whether there is even a legitimate need for any of these bills. 

Learn more about SOPA, Protect IP (PIPA), and Internet Blacklisting:

• Growing Chorus of Opposition to PIPA and SOPA
• Open Letter against SOPA from 83 Prominent Internet Engineers
• Why SOPA and Protect IP (PIPA) are Bad, Bad Ideas (Techdirt)
• Piracy not a problem, PIPA and SOPA are unnecessary (Tim O’Reilly on GigaOM)
• PIPA and SOPA News (Google News)
• PIPA Wikipedia entry ::::: SOPA Wikipedia entry
• SOPA FAQ (CNET)

Co-sponsors who say they can no longer support their own legislation include Senators Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, [...]]]> By Eric Engleman and Derek Wallbank – Jan 18, 2012 1:29 PM ET

Six U.S. lawmakers dropped their support for Hollywood-backed anti-piracy legislation as Google Inc. (GOOG), Wikipedia and other websites protest the measures.

Co-sponsors who say they can no longer support their own legislation include Senators Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, and Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat. Republican Representatives Ben Quayle of Arizona, Lee Terry ofNebraska, and Dennis Ross of Florida also said they would withdraw their backing of the House bill.

The Senate bill and the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House are backed by the movie and music industries as a means to crack down on the sale of counterfeit goods by non-U.S. websites. Hollywood studios want lawmakers to ensure that Internet companies such as Google share responsibility for curbing the distribution of pirated films and television shows.

Google, owner of the world’s most popular search engine, covered the “Google” icon on its home page today with a black box and linked to a website that says the bills may spur censorship and slow U.S. economic growth. Visitors to that website are urged to sign an online petition asking Congress to reject the legislation.

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia run by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation Inc., shut the English version of its website for 24 hours in protest against the bills. The home page of the English website gives visitors information about how to call their elected representatives.

Craiglist Action

Craigslist Inc., operator of the online classified ad website, steered users to a page with a black background and a message in white letters asking visitors to “imagine a world without craigslist, Google, Wikipedia.” The San Jose, California-based company provided visitors with a link to a page with online tools for contacting lawmakers to voice opposition to the Hollywood-backed legislation.

Rubio said he switched his position on the Senate measure, the Protect IP Act, after examining opponents’ contention that it would present a “potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government’s power to impact the Internet,” according to a posting today on Facebook. Blunt said in a statement today he is withdrawing as a co-sponsor of the Senate bill.

Ross said he was withdrawing support for the House legislation in a Twitter post today. Spokesmen for Quayle and Terry said the lawmakers would no longer back the House measure. Cardin said he couldn’t vote for the Senate bill in its current form, according to a statement Friday.

The Senate bill is S. 968 and the House bill is H.R. 3261.

The Huffington Post Arin Greenwood Posted: 1/15/12 02:04 PM ET

WASHINGTON — Occupy DC’s General Assembly passed a “corporate personhood resolution” on Saturday calling for a constitutional amendment ending the “judicial fiction of corporate Constitutional rights.”

The resolution calls on Congress to “enact” the amendment (though [...]]]>  

The Huffington Post Arin Greenwood Posted: 1/15/12 02:04 PM ET

WASHINGTON — Occupy DC’s General Assembly passed a “corporate personhood resolution” on Saturday calling for a constitutional amendment ending the “judicial fiction of corporate Constitutional rights.”

The resolution calls on Congress to “enact” the amendment (though it should be noted that Congress can’t actually enact a Constitutional amendment on its own — once two-thirds of both houses vote for the amendment, then the states also have to ratify it).

The proposed amendment would also require “Congress to regulate campaign finance” and would mandate “public financing of public elections.” The resolution contains other “non-amendment solutions” for untangling money and politics as well:

In 2010, the United States Supreme Court decided in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that independent spending on elections by corporations and other groups could not be limited by government regulations. This decision is only the latest in a long line of judicial rulings that have invented the legal doctrine of corporate personhood, affording corporations the same constitutional rights as people. The corrupting influence of money in politics, exacerbated by corporate personhood, subverts democracy. The Supreme Court has enshrined corporate personhood and interpreted the First Amendment to prohibit Congress from regulating money in politics. The only way to reverse these rulings is an amendment to the Constitution.

We support an amendment that does the following:

Ends the judicial fiction of corporate Constitutional rights.
Requires Congress to regulate campaign finance.
Mandates public financing of public elections.
We also support these non-amendment solutions:

Ending the revolving door between lobbyists and the executive and legislative branches of the government.
Restructuring the Federal Election Commission to give it prosecutorial power and neutral, non-political commissioners.Requiring the disclosure and complete transparency of all independent political expenditures.
Banning lobbyists from acting as either fundraisers or bundlers.
We implore the DC city council, the Maryland legislature, the Virginia legislature and all legislative bodies to pass resolutions calling on Congress to enact an amendment and other solutions.

We call on all people to exercise their civic duty by taking action, where possible, against corporate personhood and the corrupting influence of money in politics without waiting for the government to fix itself.

Occupy DC reserves the right to oppose an amendment or other solution even if it adheres to the provisions above.

Consent to this proposal does not require that an individual be completely in line with every piece of the proposed solution.

This concern is one of many that Occupy DC will address. More solutions are forthcoming.

Occupy DC is planning to participate in “Occupy the Courts,” a one-day protest taking place on Friday at the Supreme Court, as well as at other federal courts around the country. Citizens Unitedwas decided on Jan. 21, 2010.

Occupy DC also plans to ask the District of Columbia Council to pass an anti-corporate personhood resolution, similar to the resolutions passed by the New York City Council and the Los Angeles City Council.

Historical sidenote: The last amendment to become part of the U.S. Constitution is the 27th Amendment. This amendment says that if Congress votes to give itself a pay raise, the raise doesn’t take effect until the following Congress (in other words, if the 112th Congress votes for a pay raise, the 113th Congress gets the raise). The amendment was first introduced in 1789. It became fully ratified in 1992.

Flickr photo by takomabibelot, used under a Creative Commons license.

RELATED VIDEO: The trailer for “Hillary: The Movie” — the film at the center of the Citizens United lawsuit.