In his post on Senator Rand Paul's proposal regarding citizens and the NDAA, Bobby highlights a recurring and important question: why is it so hard for ostensibly civil libertarian legislators explicitly...

In papers filed Friday, the government renewed its request for a summary affirmance, and opposed an attempt by habeas petitioner Mohammed Rimi to remand his appeal to the district court. Rimi was transf...

Ben notes what appears to be a draft proposal from Senator Rand Paul to amend the NDAA so as to address situations involving American citizens captured inside the United States.  While the context sugges...

Further to my weekend Readings post noting David Cole's new SSRN paper, David dropped me a note, which I'm delighted to put up below.  I think David is right in these comments; knowing he's expanding thi...

The New York Times is running a Room for Debate feature entitled "Time to End Military Tribunals?" It reads a bit like a debate in which the participants are all going through the shadow-boxing motions--...

A source sent me a copy of this email, apparently from Senator Rand Paul's office last week to Republican Senate legislative directors about a coming amendment by the senator to restrict military detenti...

The government has advised the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that it may not have jurisdiction over a Guantanamo habeas appeal it is getting ready to hear. Last year, the government prevailed in the dist...

No, you didn't read that wrong. And no, this isn't an episode of South Park. The Center for Constitutional Rights and the Canadian Centre for International Justice have filed a complaint with the Geneva...

Georgetown law professor David Cole has a new article up on SSRN, "Where Liberty Lies: Civil Society and Individual Rights after 9/11."  It offers something of a retrospective on the role of civil societ...

Chief Judge Lamberth has granted the government’s motion to dismiss a first amended habeas petition filed by a Pakistani citizen held at Bagram, following the Circuit’s decision in al Maqaleh (and the su...

The other day, my Brookings colleague Daniel Byman held an event entitled "Yemen and the Future of a Resurgent Al Qaeda." One of the two panelists was Gregory Johnsen, the author of the recently-released...

So reports ABC News: Ali Mussa Daqduq---background on him here---is now a free man. A Hezbollah commander wanted by the United States has been released from Iraqi custody and returned to the Lebanese cap...

I spent the day in a hotel in Edina, Minnesota cavorting with robots. The occasion was a conference put on by a group called Robotics Alley, which is a Minnesota-based "initiative . . . meant to spur pub...

The NRC has issued a Report on vulnerability in the U.S. electric power delivery system.  (A downloadable copy can be found here.) I have only skimmed the Report, but it covers vulnerabilities not only f...

While the Senate was making a feint at legislation yesterday, far more significant cyber news was disclosed.  According to the Washington Post President Obama has signed a new Presidential Policy Directi...

As I noted, yesterday the Senate returned, briefly to consideration of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012.  The rather half-hearted effort (I think that's a fair characterization) ended as was inevitable -- i...