According to the lawsuit filed on March 15, Rosenberg “stressed that these records were ‘time sensitive’ and were sought in order to produce a report on a ‘breaking story [that] has generated wide public interest.’ Moreover, Plaintiff stressed the importance of reporting on this matter quickly so that the public can engage with their newly-elected government on the underlying policy issues involved.” She requested expedited processing.

The Pentagon had twenty days to respond to her request under freedom of information law. Yet, between December 31 and February 5, the Pentagon failed to respond to her request and claimed no exemptions under FOIA to withhold the requested records.

The speech renewed the US government’s commitment to a permanent war on terrorism. While it signaled the country would no longer be engaging in full-scale occupations or nation-building efforts while Obama was president, there was no indication that America’s dominance in the world would be reduced. America’s global military footprint of around 1,000 bases would be preserved.

A poll by the The Hill has found that a majority of “likely voters” think President Barack Obama has been the same or worse than Bush when it comes to “balancing national security with protecting civil liberties.” The results from 1,000 “likely voters” showed 37% considered Obama to have been worse. Fifteen percent said he had been “about the same” while 44% said he had been better.

President Barack Obama delivered his inaugural address for his second term. Part of the speech highlighted war. He suggested, quite absurdly, a “decade of war is now ending” and later described how Americans believe there is no need for “perpetual war.”

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow had former Pentagon general counsel Jeh Johnson on her show Thursday night. The previous night she hyped up the exclusive interview, as he had not been on television since leaving his position at the Pentagon.

Yet, during the twenty or so minutes that Johnson was on her program, she did not ask a single specific question where he would have been forced to address President Barack Obama’s continued use of drones.

The administration of President Barack Obama has gone much farther in defending and expanding indefinite detention powers than the administrations of President George W. Bush ever attempted. With the Feinstein Amendment in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), such powers are set to be further expanded, according to Bruce Afran, a lawyer who has helped a group of individuals bring a lawsuit against a provision of the 2012 NDAA that granted the United States military the authority to indefinitely detain US citizens without charge or trial.

Activists and journalists who brought a lawsuit against a Homeland Battlefield Act provision in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed in Congress and signed by President Barack Obama last December are celebrating this morning as a federal judge ruled yesterday that the provision likely violates the First and Fifth Amendments of the United States Constitution.

President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism chief John Brennan delivered a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center on Monday on the “ethics” and “efficacy” of the Obama administration counterterrorism policy. He particularly explained the policy of using remote-controlled aircraft or drones to target and assassinate alleged terror suspects or “militants” extrajudicially.

The Obama Administration may still veto the bill, since this punting to the Supreme Court on this one aspect does not address their point, which isn’t really opposition to indefinite detention as much as it is opposition to having Congress dictate detention policy at all. They already operate under the premise that the US can indefinitely detain terrorist suspects, and they want that power maintained in the executive branch rather than codified into law.

The Obama administration is using U.S. vessels to hold ghost prisoners. We don’t even know how many. The old bad days of the Bush administration are back, and the details aren’t pretty, and the outstanding questions about what is really going on are many.