Today's Headlines and Commentary

I'm not sure who sent out the memo requiring everyone to write opinion pieces on national security law over the past few days, but there sure are a lot of them. Andrew March, a professor at Yale, wrote this op-ed on the government's case against Tarek Mehanna, which he frames as being focused largely on Mehanna's thoughts, in the New York Times. In opposition to CIA Director David Petraeus' proposal to expand drone attacks in Yemen, Bruce Ackerman penned this op-ed in the Washington Post. Larry Siems of PEN American Center wrote this piece first in the Dissident Blog, and later reposted to Slate, discussing the documents that have been released related to torture in the aftermath of 9/11. Charlie Dunlap, Jr. wrote in Cleveland Plain Dealer on the photos that surfaced last week of U.S. troops posing with militants' corpses. Bob Brewin of Nextgov.com wrote this National Journal op-ed on why Congress should alter its mandates on the FAA with regards to drone use in domestic airspace. Thomas Joscelyn has this piece in the Weekly Standard on details (or the lack thereof) emerging on the Uighur detainees who were transferred to El Salvador late last week. He critiques news coverage of the transfers. And Jeffrey Rosen writes on The New Republic web site that President Obama should, if re-elected, focus on civil liberties in his second term. Meanwhile, in harder news: Charlie Savage writes in the Times on President Obama's new strategy for getting stuff done: Unilateral executive policies branded cumulatively as "We Can't Wait." Quote of the Day:

Not just a short-term shift in governing style and a re-election strategy, Mr. Obama’s increasingly assertive use of executive action could foreshadow pitched battles over the separation of powers in his second term, should he win and Republicans consolidate their power in Congress.

Speaking of which, President Obama will sign an executive order today to permit U.S. officials to impose sanctions against foreign nationals who used new technology to carry out human rights violations, Scott Wilson at the Washington Post reports.  The AP reported yesterday, as did Scott Shane and Steven Lee Myers in the Times, that Iran has recovered data from the U.S. spy drone that crashed there last year, and Al Arabiya tells us that Iran is also building a copy of the drone. Arnold Bogis blogged this morning over at Homeland Security Watch on defining the cybersecurity threat as the House gets ready to consider four different legislative proposals--though apparently not the Lungren bill, which has been getting a lot of play in recent weeks. Brendan Sasso at The Hill says that, unsurprisingly, it is the Senate that will decide the ultimate fate and composition of cybersecurity legislation. Carol Rosenberg at the Miami Herald writes on defense lawyer Michel Paradis's invocation of a 1993 Supreme Court case permitting animal sacrifice as he tries to get Al Nashiri's case thrown out of the military commission. James Risen reports in the Times on the emerging tug-of-war between the military and intelligence communities over how to cut back on satellite spending, with the intelligence community advocating for cuts in commercial contracts, and the military arguing that commercial imagery technology is less expensive. 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, Fordham Law’s Center on National Security’s Morning Brief, and Fordham Law’s Cyber Brief. Email us noteworthy articles we may have missed at wakeman.lawfare@gmail.com and  singh.lawfare@gmail.com.