President Barack Obama, during his visit to Israel, spoke at the Jerusalem Convention Center to Israeli students. It was a typically pragmatic speech, reminding the audience that US will defend the country against those who oppose its “right to exist” while at the same time outlining how Palestinians deserve a state of their own. It [...]

France and eight other countries, including the United States, are escalating an intervention in the African country of Mali. The offensive, according to French authorities, is being mounted to target Islamic extremists or al Qaeda-linked rebels who have “grabbed more territory in Mali, inching closer to the capital.” CBS News reported the ”United States is providing communications and [...]

(update below) The Washington Post has published a story that spotlights how the administration of President Barack Obama has embraced the practice of extraordinary rendition, highlighting the rendition of two Swedish men and one British-Somali man who had his British citizenship revoked. It details what is known about the men who had been missing and [...]

Lawyers involved in bringing a lawsuit against an indefinite detention provision in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) have expressed outrage over a Congressional conference committee decision to remove an amendment offered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein that she thought would ban the indefinite detention of US citizens. Michael B. Kelley for Business Insider reports [...]

UPDATE – 9:10 PM EST Josh Gerstein of POLITICO reports the Feinstein Amendment has been dropped: Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) announced the removal of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s indefinite detention amendment Tuesday afternoon as he described the results of a House-Senate conference on the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act. “The language of the [...]

The Cold War system of classifying and declassifying information held by United States government agencies is “overly complex,” “keeps too many secrets” for too long and obstructs information sharing inside government and with the public, according to a report produced by a board of individuals that President Barack Obama ordered on classified information. As part [...]

The administration of United States President Barack Obama feared they might lose re-election and in the weeks before Election Day began to develop a set of rules for using drones, according to a New York Times report by Scott Shane. An unnamed official with the Obama administration told Shane: …“There was concern that the levers [...]

President Barack Obama has issued and signed a secret presidential directive that the Washington Post reports is “the most extensive White House effort to date to wrestle with what constitutes an ‘offensive’ and a ‘defensive’ action in the rapidly evolving world of cyberwar and cyberterrorism.” The directive—Presidential Policy Directive 20—will reportedly make it possible for [...]

One of the important things we may learn during the lame duck session as the White House hammers out a deal with Republicans on the fiscal slope is an answer to the vexing if tiresome question of what “really” motivates President Obama’s policies. There are two schools of thought among progressives. For those who consistently [...]

The major newspaper endorsements indicate the makeover American superpower received when President Barack Obama was elected in 2008 worked. There is unanimous consensus among the top twenty newspapers that endorsed Obama that Obama repaired the image of America that was damaged by two terms of President George W. Bush. The Plain-Dealer wrote, “Obama has shown [...]