The long, flouncy curls from Judy Davis's cheerleader days are gone. Her straight blonde hair is now cut short. Large blue eyes stand out in a face pale without makeup. Her soft Southern drawl has an undertone of determination. "It's taken me awhile, but now I'm glad to be considered an "unsuitable influence". That was how the school board justified my firing. That and "deviating from the curriculum. It's like they were implying I was a deviant. And according to their norms, I am."

The twenty-nine-year-old was fired for teaching her high school students how US foreign policy has provoked terrorism. This struggle with her school board turned her from a Republican into a revolutionary for peace.

Abby Martin sits down with journalist, author and lead plaintiff in the case against indefinite detention, Chris Hedges, about the historical precedent the NDAA lawsuit sets, and why every American should care.

For 15 years, scientists have benefited from data gleaned by U.S. classified satellites of natural fireball events in Earth's atmosphere - but no longer. A recent U.S. military policy decision now explicitly states that observations by hush-hush government spacecraft of incoming bolides and fireballs are classified secret and are not to be released, SPACE.com had learned.

The satellites' main objectives include detecting nuclear bomb tests, and their characterizations of asteroids and lesser meteoroids as they crash through the atmosphere has been a byproduct data bonanza for scientists.

The upshot: Space rocks that explode in the atmosphere are now classified.

On February 11, 2013, the New York Times reported about the funeral of retired Navy Seal sniper Chris Kyle, portraying him as a "warrior and family man." The highly politicized and massive public funeral, held at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, points to the severe moral schizophrenia our nation has internalized. We see ourselves as the shining "city on a hill" and therefore a U.S. citizen who kills people in other lands becomes an unquestionably renowned hero. This must appear offensive and ridiculous to many people living beyond U.S. borders.

Mr. Kyle was a man who professed "no regret" for killing 160 people during his four tours in Iraq. A fellow soldier and former Marine, struggling with PTSD, murdered Kyle at point blank range while they were practice shooting for fun and "therapy" at a gun range in Texas. Despite the bizarrely karmic nature of his death and setting aside the much needed conversation on gun culture and pervasive violence which our nation is being forced to address, I am just as worried by our collective need to construct a fig leaf cover up over the legacy of Chris Kyle.

Glorifying Chris Kyle's story integrally connects to U.S. media and military efforts to affect public perception of ongoing warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as expanding war on terror policies which the Obama administration is aggressively attempting to institutionalize. Now, the U.S. not only retains the right to attack those whom it dubiously asserted were responsible for 9/11, it regards the entire world as a potential battlefield, dismissing any need for constituent and congressional approval nor any evidence of an attack being planned against the U.S. Though President Obama ran on an anti-war platform, he needs the legacy of Chris Kyle and others as much as any of the previous war criminals from the Bush years to sustain his current militarism.

According to a report from the "Combatting Terrorism Center" at West Point, 'Anti-Federalists' who oppose a New World Order as well as members of several other far right wing activist groups are potential terrorist threats.

West Point is the U.S. Military Academy that trains, educates, and prepares Cadets for their service in the U.S. Army. The CTC (Combatting Terrorism Center) at West Point was established following the events on September 11, 2001 because of the belief that strong initiative was needed to prepare Cadets for the new environments they would be headed into upon graduating in the post-9/11 era. The CTC provides a unique terrorism-based education and since its creation, the program has received international recognition for its studies, reports, and teachings on terrorism and terrorist threats. A new report from the CTC, however, suggests that far right wing political activists, not radical Islamic groups, are the new terrorist threat in America and even goes so far as to say that those who oppose a 'New World Order' are potentially violent terrorists.

If the president can order the killing of American citizens abroad should he decide they are involved with Al Qaeda, can he assassinate suspected Al Qaeda - connected US citizens in London or Berlin? What about a suspect's teenage son, a junior in a Canadian boarding school? If he can drop hellfire missiles on a house in northwestern Pakistan because he believes a terrorist cell is meeting inside, could he blow up a motel in Florida where supposed terrorists are staying and chalk up any dead vacationers as "collateral damage"?

Of course not. Pakistan is completely different. Anwar al-Awlaki may have been a US citizen, but he was in Yemen, which is different too. As for his 16-year-old son, killed in Yemen in a drone attack some weeks later along with several other people, former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs put it well, if ungrammatically: "I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well-being of their children." Unlike in the United States, in Yemen kids choose their parents.

Whatever happened to arresting people, extraditing them, giving them lawyers, putting them on trial - all that? Even in the hottest days of the Cold War, when millions believed communism threatened our very existence as a nation, Americans accused of spying for the Soviets had their day in court. No one suggested that President Eisenhower should skip the tiresome procedural stuff and just bomb the Rosenbergs' apartment.

The president and his choice to head the CIA, John Brennan, assure us that they are extremely careful, and the kill list is "legal, ethical and wise" (although they won't tell us anything more about it). Brennan asserted in 2011 that no civilians have been killed by drones. Maybe he even believes this, although the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documented more than 500 civilian casualties in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, with a high estimate of many more.

When President Obama appointed Harold Koh legal adviser to the State Department in 2009, it looked like he was sending a message: the bad old days are over. Koh, who once referred to President Bush as the "torturer in chief," was an outspoken critic of that administration's legal rationales for torture, Guantánamo and "targeted killings." Fast-forward to today, and Koh provides legal rationales for those same "targeted killings" and gives critics the kind of snide brushoff the Bushites were famous for: justice for enemies "can be delivered through trials. Drones also deliver."

As the nation spent the week debating the CIA assassination program, Obama lawyers exploit secrecy to shield it from all review

It is not news that the US government systematically abuses its secrecy powers to shield its actions from public scrutiny, democratic accountability, and judicial review. But sometimes that abuse is so extreme, so glaring, that it is worth taking note of, as it reveals its purported concern over national security to be a complete sham.

Such is the case with the Obama DOJ's behavior in the lawsuit brought by the ACLU against the CIA to compel a response to the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request about Obama's CIA assassination program. That FOIA request seeks nothing sensitive, but rather only the most basic and benign information about the "targeted killing" program: such as "the putative legal basis for carrying out targeted killings; any restrictions on those who may be targeted; any civilian casualties; any geographic limits on the program; the number of targeted killings that the agency has carried out."

Everyone in the world knows that the CIA has a targeted killing program whereby it uses drones to bomb and shoot missiles at those it wants dead, including US citizens. This is all openly discussed in every media outlet.

Key Obama officials, including the president himself, not only make selective disclosures about this program but openly boast about its alleged successes. Leon Panetta, then the CIA Director, publicly said all the way back in 2009 when asked about the CIA drone program: "I think it does suffice to say that these operations have been very effective because they have been very precise." In 2010, Panetta, speaking to the Washington Post, hailed the CIA drone program in Pakistan as "the most aggressive operation that CIA has been involved in in our history". This is just a partial sample of Obama official boasts about this very program (for more, see pages 15 to 28 here).

The most significant point in President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night was a passing and euphemistically worded reference to his program of extra-judicial drone assassinations. "Where necessary, through a range of capabilities, we will continue to take direct action against those terrorists who pose the gravest threat to Americans," he declared.

Every congressman, senator, cabinet member, Supreme Court justice and general in the House chamber knew that with that statement Obama was defending his asserted power to secretly order the assassination of anyone in any part of the world, including American citizens. The president went on to make clear he was intent on making state murder a permanent and completely institutionalized government function.

His administration, he said, had worked "tirelessly to forge a durable legal and policy framework" to guide such operations. He went on to indicate he might be open to suggestions for giving the assassination program a fig leaf of "transparency" and legality, pledging to "engage with Congress to ensure... our targeting, detention and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances..."

On Wednesday a few hundred activists crowded into the courtroom of the Second Circuit, the spillover room with its faulty audio feed and dearth of chairs, and Foley Square outside the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse in Manhattan where many huddled in the cold. The fate of the nation, we understood, could be decided by the three judges who will rule on our lawsuit against President Barack Obama for signing into law Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The section permits the military to detain anyone, including U.S. citizens, who "substantially supports" - an undefined legal term - al-Qaida, the Taliban or "associated forces," again a term that is legally undefined. Those detained can be imprisoned indefinitely by the military and denied due process until "the end of hostilities." In an age of permanent war this is probably a lifetime. Anyone detained under the NDAA can be sent, according to Section (c)(4), to any "foreign country or entity." This is, in essence, extraordinary rendition of U.S. citizens. It empowers the government to ship detainees to the jails of some of the most repressive regimes on earth.

Billionaires Dumping Stocks, Economist Knows Why
Despite the 6.5% stock market rally over the last three months, a handful of billionaires are quietly dumping their American stocks . . . and fast.

Warren Buffett, who has been a cheerleader for U.S. stocks for quite some time, is dumping shares at an alarming rate. He recently complained of "disappointing performance" in dyed-in-the-wool American companies like Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and Kraft Foods.

In the latest filing for Buffett's holding company Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett has been drastically reducing his exposure to stocks that depend on consumer purchasing habits. Berkshire sold roughly 19 million shares of Johnson & Johnson, and reduced his overall stake in "consumer product stocks" by 21%. Berkshire Hathaway also sold its entire stake in California-based computer parts supplier Intel.

With 70% of the U.S. economy dependent on consumer spending, Buffett's apparent lack of faith in these companies' future prospects is worrisome.

Unfortunately Buffett isn't alone.