The US prosecuted Omar Khadr in Guantánamo for not being a lawful combatant. Exactly the same applies to the civilian CIA

The disclosure Tuesday evening of the Department of Justice white paper on targeted killing (pdf) has sparked a lot of debate, much of it focused on the Obama administration's extraordinarily broad interpretation of what constitutes an "imminent" threat that justifies lethal force as an act of self-defense. As Senator Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky) told reporters during a conference call on Wednesday, "only a team of lawyers could define 'imminent' to mean the exact opposite" of what the word means in the real world.

There are, no doubt, many Americans alive today who should be thankful their healthcare providers did not apply the administration's interpretation of "imminent" to decide if they had crossed over the line of imminent death and said pull the plug.

Some people have acquired power and profits in post-9/11 America by pandering to and perpetuating fear. As has been the case on a range of legal issues - torture, indefinite detention, warrantless surveillance, kill lists - all it takes is for someone to say "terrorism" and "threat to security" in the same breath for the vast majority of the public to handover its principles. Rather than a serious discussion on the proper law/liberty/security balance, too often the public accepts the false syllogism that whatever it takes to stop "them" from hurting "us" is obviously, as White House spokesman Jay Carney might say, "legal, ethical and wise".

An investigation has been launched into how a hacker managed to access the email accounts of the former US president George HW Bush and members of his family.

A number of Bush family photographs and personal emails were posted online by the hacker, who goes by the name of Guccifer.

According to the Smoking Gun website, the emails - which were sent between 2009 and 2012 - contain details about the state of the former president's health as well as the home addresses, mobile phone numbers and email addresses of dozens of members of the Bush family.

The collective self-censorship over a US drone base in Saudi Arabia is but the latest act of government-subservient 'journalism'

The US media, over the last decade (at least), has repeatedly acted to conceal newsworthy information it obtains about the actions of the US government. In each instance, the self-proclaimed adversarial press corps conceals these facts at the behest of the US government, based on patently absurd claims that reporting them will harm US national security. In each instance, what this media concealment actually accomplishes is enabling the dissemination of significant government falsehoods without challenge, and permitting the continuation of government deceit and even illegality.

One of the most notorious examples was in mid-2004 when the New York Times discovered - thanks to a courageous DOJ whistleblower - that the Bush administration was eavesdropping on the electronic communications of Americans without the warrants required by the criminal law. But after George Bush summoned to the Oval Office the paper's publisher (Arthur Sulzberger) and executive editor (Bill Keller) and directed them to conceal what they had learned, the NYT complied by sitting on the story for a-year-and-a-half: until late December, 2005, long after Bush had been safely re-elected. The "national security" excuse for this concealment was patently ludicrous from the start: everyone knew the US government was trying to eavesdrop on al-Qaida communications and this story merely revealed that they were doing so illegally (without warrants) rather than legally (with warrants). By concealing the story for so long, the New York Times helped the Bush administration illegally spy on Americans.

The Washington Post's Dana Priest, in a superb act of journalism, reported in 2005 that the CIA was maintaining a network of secret "black sites" where detainees were interrogated and abused beyond the monitoring scrutiny of human rights groups and even Congress. But the Post purposely concealed the identity of the countries serving as the locale of those secret prisons in order to enable the plainly illegal program to continue without bothersome disruptions: "the Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior US officials."

Moscow is supplying small arms to Mali, director of the Federal Agency for Military-Technical Cooperation Aleksandr Fomin said Friday. "We are supplying assault rifles and grenade launchers," RIA Novosti quoted him as saying. There were reports earlier that Russia could provide transport services to Mali, but the Foreign Ministry said only private companies could provide these during the military operation.

John O. Brennan couldn't even finish introducing his family before he was interrupted four times by protesters at his confirmation hearing Thursday to become the new director of the CIA.

Intelligence committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein halted the hearing and pulled Mr. Brennan from the room until it could be cleared of protesters, who she said were affiliated with Code Pink, the anti-war group.

Mr. Brennan, who is President Obama's homeland security adviser, is one of the chief architects of U.S. policy in the war on terror, and senators said they are eager to question him about the administration's program to use drones to execute American citizens deemed to be part of the war on terror overseas.

"Think about the mothers," cried one female protestor.

American Foreign Policy - Have our war lovers learned anything?

Over the past four decades, of all the reasons people over a certain age have given for their becoming radicalized against US foreign policy, the Vietnam War has easily been the one most often cited. And I myself am the best example of this that you could find. I sometimes think that if the war lovers who run the United States had known of this in advance they might have had serious second thoughts about starting that great historical folly and war crime.

At other times, however, I have the thought that our dear war lovers have had 40 years to take this lesson to heart, and during this time what did they do? They did Salvador and Nicaragua, and Angola and Grenada. They did Panama and Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan and Iraq. And in 2012 American President Barack Obama saw fit to declare that the Vietnam War was "one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of military history".¹

So, have they learned nothing? When it comes to following international law, is the United States like a failed state? The Somalia of international law? Well, if they were perfectly frank, the war lovers would insist that the purpose of all these interventions, and many others like them, was to keep the atheists out of power - the non-believers in America's god-given right to rule the world - or to at least make life as difficult as possible for them. And thus the interventions were successful; nothing to apologize for; even the Vietnam War achieved its purpose of preventing that country from becoming a good development option for Asia, a socialist alternative to the capitalist model; precisely the same reason for Washington's endless hostility toward Cuba in Latin America; and Cuba has indeed inspired numerous atheists and their alternatives for a better world.

Affiliates still not free of mandate

America's Catholic bishops on Thursday rejected President Obama's latest contraception mandate upon religiously affiliated hospitals, schools and charities, saying the rules still don't ensure that people won't be forced to pay for contraceptives to which they morally object.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he appreciated the Health and Human Services Department's latest effort to try to work out a compromise that lets women obtain free birth control without religiously affiliated organizations having to pay for it. But Cardinal Dolan said it still doesn't treat religiously affiliated charities and other groups the same as churches and temples themselves.

"HHS offers what it calls an 'accommodation' rather than accepting the fact that these ministries are integral to our church and worthy of the same exemption as our Catholic churches," he said.

The administration's latest offer was an attempt to end a public and politically draining dispute for Mr. Obama with the nation's Catholic hierarchy, one that has spilled over into the courts. But finding a workable middle ground has been difficult for both sides.

Under Mr. Obama's health care law, most employers are required to provide health insurance that provide women with free contraceptive coverage, including sterilization and access to morning-after pills that some ethicists say amounts to abortion.

Houses of worship are exempt, but religiously affiliated employers, such as Catholic universities or hospitals, are not.

Seattle's mayor on Thursday ordered the police department to abandon its plan to use drones after residents and privacy advocates protested.

Mayor Mike McGinn said the department will not use two small drones it obtained through a federal grant. The unmanned aerial vehicles will be returned to the vendor, he said.

"Today I spoke with Seattle Police Chief John Diaz, and we agreed that it was time to end the unmanned aerial vehicle program, so that SPD can focus its resources on public safety and the community building work that is the department's priority," the mayor said in a brief statement.

The decision comes as the debate over drones heats up across the country. Lawmakers in at least 11 states are looking at plans to restrict the use of drones over their skies amid concerns the vehicles could be exploited to spy on Americans.

The Seattle Police Department previously said it would use drones to provide an overhead view of large crime scenes, serious accidents, disasters, and search and rescue operations. It had conducted demonstrations of the drones to show the public their capabilities.

The program drew strong criticism from residents Wednesday at a meeting of the City Council, which was considering an ordinance giving police the authority to use drones.

The proposed measure would have allowed the use of drones for data collection but barred police from using them over "open-air assembly of people" or for general surveillance. The drones would have carried no weapons, but the proposal would have allowed police to use face-recognition software in them.

The U.S. Justice Department has just released a 16-page memo outlining its justification for why President Obama can order drone killings of American citizens. The paper is a wild tour of bizarro-land justifications from a government that no longer abides by any Constitutional limits or even principles of human rights.

As NBC News frighteningly reports:

A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be "senior operational leaders" of al-Qaida or "an associated force" -- even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.

White House press secretary Jay Carney, the mouthpiece of tyranny and lawlessness in America today, added that "These strikes are legal, they are ethical and they are wise." (FreeBeacon.com)

Thus, the idea that an American citizen receives a trial by jury, a defense attorney, due process of law and an ability to face his accusers is utterly thrown out the window. What this memo essentially "legalizes" is the ability of the U.S. President to simply order the murder of anyone he names. No law needs to be followed. No arguments offered. There does not even need to be a single shred of evidence that this person has violated any law whatsoever. The decision process takes place in total secrecy and is not subject to judicial review of any kind.

The President has become a dictator. There's no other way to say it: This is tyranny. A President who has the power to kill anyone he wishes, completely outside of law and the Constitution, is a dictatorial tyrant. He is a "king." This is precisely the kind of thing our Founding Fathers fought against in breaking away from the King of England. Our ancestors were fed up with secret trials, secret executions, secret court proceedings and suffering under the whims of one man whose power was completely unchecked.

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart went after the Obama administration last night for the lack of transparency about its drone policy. Stewart pointed out that the administration has refused to release legal memos about its policy, but has eagerly released documents pertaining to controversial polices from the Bush administration: "We're happy to share irrelevant information with the public. We told you we were going to be transparent. We just didn't tell you it was going to be about the last guy's secrets."