Below you'll find a compilation of public statements on Senator Patrick Leahy's new and improved USA Freedom Act, which he unveiled yesterday. Suffice it to say:  the reviews are generally positive, giv...

As Wells reported this morning, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy unveiled his version of the NSA reform bill today. Leahy’s bill is important because, well, it’s not just Leahy’s bill. I...

A little postscript to my note about Friday’s vote in the House, regarding military operations in Iraq: this quite critical statement, which House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard "Buck" McKeon r...

Over at Just Security, Steve Vladeck objects to the piece Jack, Bobby, Matt and I wrote over the weekend on Lisa Monaco's AUMF comments at the Aspen Security Forum. He argues that we are over-reading her...

Nowadays figuring out what sort of post-2001 AUMF authority the White House wants is a bit of a tea leaf-reading exercise. Potentially relevant to it are the events of last Friday concerning the 2002 AUM...

Six months ago today, I wondered aloud on this blog when President Obama might nominate a new Legal Adviser.   At that point, the position had been vacant for over a year since Harold Koh stepped down in...

Josh Gerstein of Politico reports that "[a] top White House official suggested Saturday that Congress pass new legislation to support Pre

The New York Times the other day ran this story about an interview Edward Snowden gave to the Guardian in Moscow. The Guardian interview made a few waves because of Snowden's claim that NSA analysts pass...

So reports the LA Times.  Here's a short summary: As part of the deal, the intelligence community agreed to a stricter definition of the search terms the NSA may use to seek data from telephone companies...

Ever since the Edward Snowden revelations began, countries outraged by U.S. intelligence practices have been batting around the idea of forcing countries to store data on their citizens within those coun...

After Edward Snowden leaked, the UK Government dripped. Or, to put it less metaphorically, a major controversy played out in the UK over the past week around the speed, tone and scope of the coalition G...

Recent events again have raised the issue of accountability for alleged human rights violations by Blackwater, the most notorious of the private contractors deployed by the United States in the Iraq war....