On the rather surreal occasion of the opening of something solemnly called the George W. Bush “Library,” I was inexorably drawn not to my personal Bush Library of 92 infuriating volumes, but the somewhat smaller 60 or so in the Nixon section.  As I listened to snippets of Village homilies and President Obama predictably joshing chummily about the “clubhouse,”  I was reminded of Jonathan Schell’s masterful recounting of the Watergate era, The Time of Illusion. 

The administration of President Barack Obama—in particular, the Justice Department—maintains the targeted killings of United States citizens believed to be members of al Qaeda is legal. A leaked white paper that NBC News provides a glimpse at the cold calculus behind the justification for such operations.