WASHINGTON, May 7 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today welcomed a federal appeals court ruling that the National Security Agency does not have the legal authority to collect and store data on all U.S. telephone calls.

“Clearly we must do everything we can to protect our country from the serious potential of another terrorist attack, but we can and must do so in a way that also protects the constitutional rights of the American people and maintains our free society,” Sanders said. “We can do that without living in an Orwellian world where the government and private corporations know every telephone call that we make, every website we visit, everyplace we go.”

WASHINGTON, May 7 – Citing Nike’s low wages for foreign workers, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) yesterday asked President Obama to cancel a planned meeting on Friday with executives of the athletic shoe maker at its headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.

Nike has taken advantage of free-trade agreements – similar to proposed new pact which Obama is touting – to offshore tens of thousands of American jobs to Vietnam and other low-wage countries.

“Nike epitomizes why disastrous unfettered free-trade policies during the past four decades have failed American workers, eroded our manufacturing base and increased income and wealth inequality in this country,” Sanders wrote in a letter he sent to the president yesterday.

WASHINGTON, May 6 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today introduced legislation to break up the nation’s biggest banks in order to safeguard the economy and prevent another costly taxpayer bailout. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) proposed a companion bill in the House.

“No single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure could send the world economy into crisis,” Sanders said. “If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”

The biggest banks in the United States are now 80 percent bigger than they were one year before the financial crisis in 2008 when the Federal Reserve provided $16 trillion in near zero-interest loans and Congress approved a $700 billion taxpayer bailout.

Vermont Energy Efficiency Leaders Gather to Discuss Latest Initiatives to Save Money, Create Jobs, and Protect the Environment

MONTPELIER, VT. At Blodgett Supply in Montpelier today, Rep. Peter Welch met with a broad cross-section of Vermont energy efficiency leaders to outline his efficiency priorities for the new Congress and learn about the latest energy efficiency innovations in Vermont. The roundtable discussion comes on the heels of House approval this week of Welch-authored energy efficiency legislation which President Obama will soon sign into law.