President Obama says he would “welcome congressional support” but does not need authorization from Congress in order to use force against the Islamic State.  The President appears to have taken no steps ...

For the two people still following the exchange between me and Peter Margulies over the bottom-side briefing in the al Bahlul D.C.

Harold’s Koh’s grudging defense of the domestic legal basis for President’s Obama’s use of force against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is important.  It adds little new to other defenses of the Pre...

I must confess that I don't fully understand Peter Margulies' response to my post from earlier today. My post argued that the bottom-side briefing in the D.C.

Jane already flagged the merits brief filed by the U.S. government on September 17 in al Bahlul v. United States, the major challenge to the power of the Guantánamo military commissions to try non-intern...

In February, Karen DeYoung and Greg Miller wrote a story in the WP about how Al-Qaeda’s then-recent expulsion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, now Islamic State, or IS) raised questions abou...

You know that the political system has reached a moment of special paralysis when a standoff emerges out of agreement. Yet that is what appears to be happening with respect to the politics of authorizing...

Jack is very generous to Glenn Greenwald in his post earlier today, in which he notes areas where he agrees with what he terms Greenwald's "skeptical takedown of the factual basis for the attacks on the ...

The Guardian reports that USG bombing of Jabhat al-Nusra, the al Qaeda group (or AQ-affiliated group) in Syria that has been at odds with the Islamic State for a year or so: Air strikes continued to targ...

The biggest surprise I’ve had in this job is how much time the national-security issues take. Those are the primary things that I have to deal with in a post-9/11 world. From an eight-thirty meeting ever...

That's the word from this piece by NPR's Carrie Johnson.  It begins: Eric Holder Jr., the nation's first black U.S. attorney general, is preparing to announce his resignation Thursday after a tumultuous...