Today’s Headlines and Commentary

Tal Kopan of Politico reports that a coalition of human rights and civil liberties organizations---including our friends at the ACLU, Amnesty International, CCR, and HRW---have sent this letter to President Obama “urging him to veto the FY2013 National Defense Authorization Act if it in any way restricts the executive branch’s ability to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.” Alan wrote on Monday that this isn’t likely to happen. Thomas Friedman argues in the New York Times that Arne Duncan should be the next Secretary of State. It’s the new face of journalism---or stalking: Dylan Byers of Politico tells us that KBIA, Missouri’s NPR affiliate, has received $25k from the University of Missouri, which it plans to use to build drones to collect media. Byers also reports that TMZ (which, if you’re not a teenage girl, might mean nothing to you) has denied that it requested the FAA's permission to use a drone, a claim made by the San Francisco Chronicle that it then retracted. The agency confirmed that TMZ has not applied for drone privileges. And, Kashmir Hill of Forbes asks the FAA whether it has granted a waiver to NewsCorp for its drone. Richard A. Epstein of NYU Law School and the Hoover Institution has this piece on why we have no choice but to trust our public officials on national security matters. He references Rick Pildes’s article with Samuel Issacharoff, both of NYU Law, entitled “Targeted Warfare.” The Times has this editorial about the right pace to withdraw from Afghanistan. President Obama has signed the Whistlebower Protection Enhancement Act, says Samuel Rubenfeld of the Wall Street Journal. The U.S. government revoked Anwar al-Awlaki’s passport six months before its drone found him, according to Josh Gerstein of Politico. Hilariously, though, the State Department apparently instructed the U.S. Embassy in Yemen to contact Awlaki and ask him to come to the embassy to receive the letter about his passport. He was too smart to fall for that one. Pfc Bradley Manning’s trial continues; Larry Shaughnessy of CNN’s Security Clearance blog has the latest update, the most notable part of which is yesterday’s testimony by Marine Col. Daniel Choike, who oversaw Manning’s detention at Quantico. Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis (whew!), the gentleman who allegedly plotted to blow up the New York Federal Reserve, pleaded not guilty today to charges of material support and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, according to Christie Smythe of Bloomberg. For more interesting law and security-related articles, follow us on Twitter, visit the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law’s Security Law Brief, Syracuse’s Institute for National Security & Counterterrorism’s newsroll, and Fordham Law’s Center on National Security’s Morning Brief and Cyber Brief. Email Raffaela Wakeman and Ritika Singh noteworthy articles to include, visit the Lawfare Events Calendar for upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings at the Lawfare Job Board.