SNOWDEN: “…After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power — the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government — for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism.

The U.S. Justice Department, joined by the attorneys general of six states and the District of Columbia, filed a lawsuit to block the merger Tuesday in federal court in Washington, D.C.

The state attorney general is pursuing the case despite the offices’s prerogative of discretion. Kathleen Kane recently exercised that discretion by refusing to defend the state ban on gay marriage in court. The office apparently believes there’s a difference between defending a law and enforcing it, with this rationale: The case was handed up to the office because the local D.A. had a conflict, there’s sufficient evidence that a statute has been violated, so charges must be brought…

The practice has become “a fact of daily life in some New York City neighbourhoods,” [Federal District Judge Shira] Scheindlin said in her ruling. the NYPD’s interest in keeping New York’s crime rate down against black and Latino plaintiffs who felt discriminated against.

WE.CONNECT.DOTS: Other than current governor Republican Tom Corbett and former governor Democrat Ed Rendell, who wants to privatize the Pennsylvania lottery?

LEHIGH VALLEY MORNING CALL Op Ed: The closure of psychiatric hospitals, without providing sufficient aftercare, contributed to the explosion of our prison population. In Pennsylvania alone, inmates increased from 8,000 to 51,000 in 30 years.

NEWSMAX: ….According to Dr.[Chauncey] Crandall, the survey reflects across-the-board shifts in quality from larger hospitals to the smaller ones. One key measure of quality, he noted, is staffing. “Historically, there was more money in the system to hire properly trained nurses and other staff at the big clinics.

The Workers Defense Project, founded in 2002, has emerged as one of the nation’s most creative organizations for immigrant workers. Its focus is the Texas construction industry, which employs more than 600,000 workers, about half of whom, several studies suggest, are unauthorized immigrants.

Audits failed to catch problems at three Pennsylvania intermediate units embroiled in financial scandals since 2011, even though budgets for such organizations can exceed $100 million and spending is subject to local, state and federal reviews.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: Life may get harsher and hungrier for nearly three million people in Pennsylvania and New Jersey on Nov. 1, when food-stamp benefits will be cut overnight for the first time in U.S. history.

Despite its name, the InTempo skyscraper was, seemingly rushed through the blueprint process, and its attempted message of prosperity through the country’s economic tumult has become one that is more fitting to the current state of things in Spain as a whole.