Senate to Intel Agencies: We Don't Need to Know How Often You Spy on Americans

There's nothing like a debate over warrantless wiretapping to clarify how the two parties really feel about government. On Friday, the Senate voted to reauthorize the government's warrantless surveillance program, with hawkish Democrats joining with Republicans to block every effort to curtail the government's sweeping spying powers.

As the Senate debated the renewal of the government's warrantless wiretapping powers on Thursday, Republicans who have accused President Barack Obama of covering up his involvement in the death of an American ambassador urged that his administration be given sweeping spying powers. Democrats who accused George W. Bush of shredding the Constitution with warrantless wiretapping four years ago sung a different tune this week, with the administration itself quietly urging passage of the surveillance bill with no changes, and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) accusing her Democratic colleagues of not understanding the threat of terrorism.

EXCERPT: "A People's History Of The Great Recession" By Arthur Delaney

What follows is an excerpt from "A People's History of the Great Recession," a compilation of HuffPost Politics reporter Arthur Delaney's stories on those hit hardest by the economic crisis. This collection of Arthur's impassioned reporting, putting flesh and blood on the statistics, also marks the debut of HuffPost's entry into e-book publishing , which will allow us to delve deeply into interesting and timely topics. Look for our next title coming later this month. For more on "A People’s History of the Great Recession," check out Arianna’s latest blog post here.

INTRODUCTION: How the Rules Have Changed

On July 17, 2009, Terry Harris of Jonesville, S.C., lost her job as an executive assistant at a promotional products company. The company, she said, went belly up.

"My boss actually cried when I was let go," Harris told me during an interview in May 2011. "I have an excellent letter of recommendation from him."

In other words, Harris said, "It was purely an economic thing." She lost her job through no fault of her own.

What she hadn't figured out was why she was still unemployed and why her husband had been bounced from one wretched low-paying job to another. Why, she asked, if they both finished high school, got some post-secondary education, had solid work histories and held off on having kids, was it such a struggle to pay for things like getting the car fixed and visiting the dentist?