As Bobby notes, the recently announced criminal prosecution of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, captured overseas almost three months ago by U.S. military forces, could be an important test of an emerging hybri...

This is, I think, a big deal. Hot on the heels of the fascinating testimony last week from Admiral McRaven and General Allen regarding disposition options for terrorism suspects captured overseas but out...

Last week I posted about testmony from Admiral McRaven and General Allen concerning the lack of U.S.-controlled detention option in a world in which the executive branch does not want to see anyone broug...

I could lard this post with all sort of platitudinous reflections on the continuing relevance of that old 18th Century text. But I'll refrain. Grill some meat. Drink some beer. Watch some pretty explosio...

Deborah Pearlstein and Ben have been exchanging posts in relation to the pending NDAA legislation and detention authority issues.  One passage in the exchange struck me as particularly significant.  Deb ...

Deborah Pearlstein answers my question: Ben Wittes, long an advocate for clearer domestic legislation authorizing U.S. detention operations,writes to ask whether my recent post favoring the Senate’s over...

This will show Rumsfeld! From CNN.com: Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- Iran plans to prosecute 26 current and former American officials, an Iranian lawmaker said Sunday, potentially escalating a tit-for-tat dispu...

My former colleague Eugene Robinson has a column in the Washington post entitled "Assassination by Robot," which seems to me to warrant a brief response. Robinson begins by saying that, "The skies over a...

I was intrigued by this post from a few days ago by Deborah Pearlstein over at Opinio Juris. Entitled "Catching Up with the Senate on Detainee Matters," it concludes as follows: the Senate bill is a subs...

The appointment of Brig. General Mark Martins as chief prosecutor of the military commissions, as Jack and I discussed here and here, is a step of enormous importance in establishing legitimacy for a com...

The White House announcement is here.

Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedmann have a piece in the new issue of Foreign Affairs (mostly behind the pay wall, but an excerpt is here) offering a mixed verdict on drone strike operations in Pakistan. ...

Carrie Johnson at NPR posts (who knew that NPR reporters were blogging?  This is really great stuff - add Carrie to your RSS feed) some important additional details.  First, she confirms that there is st...

The Washington Post reports this morning that JSOC recently carried out a drone strike in Somalia, targeting two al-Shabab leaders.  The piece emphasizes that the Administration has recently highlighted ...

As things stand now, the National Defense Authorization Act could end up being a disaster for the Obama administration on detainee matters. Much of the fault for this lies with Congress, a bipartisan maj...

Marty Lederman offers this analysis over at Balkinization of two critical amendments proposed by Senator Richard Lugar and adopted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. Lederman points ou...

[UPDATE: See here for a clarification; contrary to my original read below, it appears Admiral McRaven did not mean for the list of disposition options to refer to non-AUMF scenarios] While many eyes were...