Today's Headlines and Commentary

Let's start with the NDAA. As Ben noted yesterday, the Senate voted to retain provisions requiring mandatory military custody of terrrorism suspects, report the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Raffaela has posted a bunch of legislative materials here and here--for those who can stomach them. Lots of Pakistan news: The BBC reports that Pakistan will boycott a conference in Bonn, Germany about the future of Afghanistan in protest of the NATO airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers over the weekend. According to the Times, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said in response to this development:

Frankly, it is regrettable that Pakistan has decided not to attend the conference in Bonn, because this conference has been long in the planning. . . . Pakistan, like the United States, has a profound interest in a secure, stable, increasingly democratic Afghanistan. Our gathering in Bonn this coming Monday is intended to further that goal.

The article also describes a brief cross-border "incident" early today that involved heavy artillery fire, although thankfully, there were no casualties. In related news, Reuters reports that the U.S. will aquiense to Pakistani demands to vacate an air base in from which it conducts drone strikes. The Wall Street Journal has an editorial arguing that "a break with America isn't in Islamabad's best interests," and the Times has an editorial criticizing the American response to the NATO airstrikes. The Politico informs us that former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, is "urging that [the CIA drone] program be publicly acknowledged and placed in the hands of the U.S. military." The video of his remarks is available here. On to terrorism trials news: The Boston Globe reports that an associate of Tarek Mehanna's testified that the two "discussed domestic terrorist plots, such as a mass shooting at a Massachusetts Air Force base, a shopping mall, and even the assassination of top US officials, all in the name of jihad." Charming. Rezwan Ferdaus, the Massachusetts man accused of plotting to fly drones into the Pentagon was denied bail on Monday, according to the AP. The AP reports that sentencing has been delayed for 2 New Jersey men who pled guilty in March of conspiring to join Al-Shabaab. And Col. Gregory Gross, the army judge in Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan’s case, refuses to step down despite claims of bias; the judge was at Fort Hood the day Hasan went on a killing spree, says the AP. The Times has a piece on the nefarious Haqqani death squads, which appear to be behind the sharp rise in assasinations of Afghan informants. And who needs a Predator, when you, too, can actually be a drone. If that sounds appealing, check out today's Moment of Zen.