The Legal Rationale for Whacking Awlaki Is Flimsy

Although the Obama administration’s legal rationale for killing suspected terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki remains classified at a high level, administration officials, under media pressure to justify killing an American citizen without a trial, finally have leaked most of...

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The Government’s Illusory Terrorist Threat

Now that the big kahuna — Osama bin Laden — has been killed, the “War on Terror” is much less exciting. Even before Osama’s demise, experts sent chills through the massive post-9/11 U.S. government anti-terrorism bureaucracies by concluding that the threat from...

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A Double Standard for the Ultimate Penalty

The execution of a potentially innocent Troy Davis last week justifiably horrified many in the United States and around the world. Most of the non-police eyewitnesses had recanted or contradicted their testimony that he killed an off-duty police officer; they alleged...

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Government Always Seems to Focus on the Wrong Things

The 10th anniversary of 9/11 vividly illustrated the continued use of the horrible attacks to score political points. The first promise that Barack Obama made as president was to close the torture-tainted Guantanamo prison. Although this could have been a meaningful...

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Comparing Obama and Bush on Civil Liberties and War

Documents found in the files of Muammar Gadhafi’s intelligence services in Libya, which indicated that the now overthrown dictator cooperated closely with U.S. rendition of terrorist suspects to his torture chambers, should prompt questions about how much President...

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Cut Back on Bad Policy or Quit Altogether?

In a recent New Yorker article, an anonymous Obama White House aide suggested that the administration had been trying to lead from behind on issues such as the overthrow of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi or the Egyptian and Tunisian revolts. Yet even some liberal...

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Triumph in Libya? Not So Fast, NATO

The conventional wisdom is that U.S.-led NATO vanquished the ruthless and despotic Moammar Gadhafi. And that is largely what happened. Gadhafi had one of the worst human rights records on the planet, was autocratic, and was even downright bizarre at times. Moreover,...

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Ron Paul Deserves More Respect

Although Ron Paul placed second in the Iowa straw poll, behind Michele Bachmann by the slimmest of margins, most media commentators — both left and right — refused to anoint him as one of the “big three” candidates remaining in the Republican presidential contest....

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US Terror Lists Should Be Downsized

The Christian Science Monitor and the Huffington Post have exposed lobbying efforts by the Marxist-Islamist group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to hire for big bucks former high U.S. government officials to give speeches to, either explicitly or implicitly, endorse their...

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