With questions still unanswered on the President’s targeted killing powers, John Brennan was sworn in today as CIA Director. But in a ironically symbolic twist of fate the Constitution used to swear Brennan in did not contain the Bill of Rights. From emptywheel: According to the White House, John Brennan was sworn in as CIA [...]

Senator Lindsey Graham is planning to place a hold on the nominations of Chuck Hagel and John Brennan if the Obama Administration does not grant his demands for more information on the response to the Benghazi embassy attack. Graham indicated that he is reserving the right to put a hold on the nominations of Hagel [...]

During his confirmation hearing CIA Director nominee John Brennan was asked what role the Enhanced Interrogation/Torture Program had in finding the location of Osama Bin Laden. The question was raised due to numerous Bush Administration officials publicly claiming that torture yielded the information that was vital in planning the Osama Bin Laden raid. That view [...]

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy 6:00 pm: Hearing adjourned. 5:50 pm: Sen Collins responds to Brennan saying Al Qaeda has “metastasized” asking if that indicates a need to change strategy. 5:41 pm: Sen Wyden asks Brennan if Americans who are authorized to be killed should have an opportunity [...]

Just ahead of today’s CIA director confirmation hearing President Obama has ordered the release of memos that were written by his administration to justify the killing of American citizens without due process. The White House on Wednesday directed the Justice Department to release to the two Congressional Intelligence Committees classified documents discussing the legal justification [...]

Tomorrow will be one of the first and possibly last opportunities for a real discussion of the US Drone Assassination program as John Brennan goes before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in hopes of being confirmed as CIA director. Already a contentious issue, the stakes have been further raised as a Justice Department white [...]

Greg Miller will shine a light on the new American way of war for the next three days, with a multi-part series in the Washington Post on the kill list, the way in which terrorist suspects are selected for death from above by Predator drones. The goal here appears to be to codify the techniques into executive branch practice, for turnkey use by any current or future Administration.

Scarecrow has already gone on in this space about the New York Times’ big takeout today about the “kill list” – the President’s leadership in presiding over a list of suspected terrorists that the US then assassinates with Predator drone strikes. There’s a lot that can be said about this article, most of it from [...]

The one-candidate Presidential election in Yemen happened today. You’ll never guess who won! Yemenis voted Tuesday to instate their U.S.-backed vice president as the new head of state tasked with steering the country out of a crisis created by an anti-government uprising that has raged for a year. The vote can hardly be called an [...]

So what’s going on with the US drone base in Pakistan? Yesterday, the Financial Times wrote that the Pakistani Defense Minister, Ahmed Mukhtar, demanded that the US remove itself from the Shamsi air base used to launch drone attacks. But the US is apparently refusing to leave, and suggested they didn’t even know about the [...]

The US and Arabian Gulf nations are locked in crisis negotiations as they try to avert a civil war in Yemen. Over the past week-plus, clashes between regime security forces loyal to embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the Hashed tribe have killed close to 150. The regime has used tanks, automatic weapons and even [...]