The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted 10-9 to approve the Toxic Right-to-Know Protection Act (S. 595) on July 31. The act would reverse a December 2006 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rule change to the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) that significantly reduced toxic release reporting requirements for polluting facilities.

Just before Congress broke for its August recess, members vastly expanded the Bush administration's authority to wiretap communications without warrants.

OpenTheGovernment.org and People For the American Way recently released Government Secrecy: Decisions Without Democracy, which gives a comprehensive examination of the importance of government transparency and the various legislative and policy means for promoting and curtailing open government.

On July 6, a divided Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a 2006 federal district court finding that the National Security Agency's (NSA) Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures and the First Amendment's protection of free speech. Without ruling on the constitutionality of the TSP, the judges dismissed the case based on the plaintiffs' lack of standing.