Using a Would-Be Subway Bomber to Justify Sweeping Surveillance

Najibullah Zazi, coffee vendor, is such a useful captured terrorist.   Question why the New York Police Department sends undercover “crawlers” to monitor mosques and Muslim students, and the department’s partisans point to Mr. Zazi. How do you think, they ask, we caught that Queens kid who was ready to blow up subway cars in…

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Debating the Legal Basis for the War on Terror

A top Pentagon official said Thursday that the evolving war against Al Qaeda was likely to continue “at least 10 to 20 years” and urged Congress not to modify the statute that provides its legal basis.   “As of right now, it suits us very well,” Michael A. Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense for…

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Is the FBI unable to ‘talk about jihad’?

“We see with the new FBI terminology and the new intelligence terminology, they can’t talk about the enemy. They can’t talk about jihad. They can’t talk about Muslim. They can’t talk about Islam.”— Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), speech on the House floor, April 26, 2013   Has the FBI been hamstrung in its investigation of the…

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Glenn Beck: Michele Bachmann Under Investigation Because She’s Against Radical Islam

Glenn Beck suggested Tuesday that the ethics investigation into the erstwhile presidential campaign of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is retribution for the congresswoman’s outspoken crusade against what she has called the threat of radical Islam.   “We have been sold to radical Islam,” Beck said matter-of-factly on his Internet show. “It has infiltrated and we…

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Court Orders the C.I.A. to Disclose Drone Data

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court held Friday that the Central Intelligence Agency must disclose, at least to a judge, a description of its records on drone strikes in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The 19-page opinion by Judge Merrick B. Garland rejected an effort…

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