Records released by the FBI via a Freedom of Information Act request confirm earlier accusations of political policing regarding the Occupy movement. Even more disturbing, personnel within the FBI invoked the term “domestic terrorism” when referring to non-violent protests while also coordinating opposition to the protests with banks and other private firms.

Hearings in Congress today pile on the political debate over the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi. The hearings come on the heels of the Pickering-Mullen report, which looked at the actions of the State Department and foreign service leading up to the attack, finding serious deficiencies in management and “grossly inadequate” security at [...]

Apparently the meetings between potential Secretary of State nominee Susan Rice and cranky old warhawks didn’t go very well. “Bottom line, I’m more disturbed now than I was before,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the critics, said after the meeting. The Republican senators have repeatedly said they are concerned with how Rice explained what [...]

A day after we hear about the disposition matrix, the drone wars and the militarization of the CIA, along comes Scott Shane to pose a question to all the same people who say we can’t afford to leave a legacy of debt to our children and grandchildren: uh, how do you plan to pay for [...]

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.

Tonight’s Presidential debate will focus on foreign policy, and that means we will once again wade into this attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, the details of which look more muddled than ever. The need for clarity among the media and political class – either this arose from a spontaneous demonstration, or it was [...]

President Obama won the second debate against Mitt Romney last night by managing to defend elements of his first term record and articulate a second term agenda, while his opponent struggled with specifics and was haunted by the spectre of George W. Bush, who he probably thought was disappeared for electoral purposes in this country. [...]

The attack on the US consulate in Benghazi has become a political football, in ways that the father of slain US Ambassador Chris Stevens wants to see stopped. That’s not likely, as both sides highlight the aspects of the story to their advantage, and suppress the aspects that present vulnerabilities. For the Obama-Biden team, they [...]

Congress decided to return to work early, or at least one committee did. The House Oversight Committee is holding a hearing at this hour on the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including US Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Marcy Wheeler has been bravely live-tweeting the event; I don’t think I could [...]

A disturbing new Senate report highlights anti-terrorism “fusion centers,” which were designed to allow state, local and federal investigators to share information about terrorism. Instead, says the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the centers have produced useless intelligence information and proven a waste of money. “The subcommittee investigation could identify no reporting which uncovered a [...]

Tonight’s debate is supposed to be focused mainly on the economy, but the Romney campaign has worked hard to get the Benghazi consulate attack into the conversation. And given the shifting story from the White House and the potential implications, that might be a good idea. House Republicans gave a boost to this argument by [...]