Argument in the government’s appeal against the provision of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which grants the military the authority to indefinitely detain US citizens, took place this morning at the Second Circuit United States Court of Appeals.

In the wake of Secretary Panetta’s historic decision to eliminate the combat exclusion rule for women, there will be much angst about women lacking the physical strength to perform in combat. The handwringing ignores some key “facts on the ground.”

It says something about our times that a policy shift like this is announced and it is treated as a big story, but not an earth-shaking pronouncement.

Escaped slaves fought on the British side, which promised to free them, during the American war for independence for white men. But nobody liked to talk about that much after the French won the war, although — come to think of it — nobody much likes to talk about the French winning the war, or for that matter about the big losers being, not the British but the Native Americans.

White folks weren’t eager to arm slaves, although an NRA-type genius just said on U.S. televisions this week that if slaves had only been armed they wouldn’t have been slaves. The militias famously protected by the Second Amendment included, perhaps primarily, white militias aimed at crushing slave rebellions. Escaped slaves fought for the Union in the Civil War, which may not have been an insignificant factor in Lincoln’s decision to announce their freedom.

A few days ago a tweet pointed out that the Rand Corporation had released a study, US Global Defense Posture, 1783-2011. Given the upcoming budget controversy about the military budget and the coming end of “combat operations” in Afghanistan, I decided that this might be an interesting read. And it is, in a way. It’s a 146-page summary of the history of the US military’s global deployment over its entire history up through 2011. It is readable and has extensive footnotes and a bibliography.

It creates a classification of US military postures.

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.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that a lawsuit brought by a lawyer with the National Lawyers Guild against a military operative who infiltrated peace activist groups may proceed.

NLG member attorney Larry Hildes, one of the lawyers involved in bringing Panagacos v. Towery, told Firedoglake this is the “first time any appellate court has ever said that yes you can sue the military for damages for spying on civilian activists. As far as we know there has never been another case that said this.” He added, “By saying we have legitimate causes of action against the army personnel for spying on our clients, getting our clients arrested, etc,” it means we have grounds to sue and that these causes of action, if proven, may entitle plaintiffs to damages.

President Obama’s reelection has sparked an onslaught of analysis attempting to define the agenda for his second term. Will it reflect the vision of restoring liberty and security on which the president ran in 2008, or the disappointing passivity towards the national security state that characterized his first term?

More to the point, will President Obama’s legacy include emerging American authoritarianism, or instead the recovery of constitutional freedoms lost over the past decade?

The Washington Post has published a third story in its series on the Obama administration’s institutionalization of its targeted killing program. This story highlights Camp Lemmonier, the United States military base in Djibouti where drones land or take off around sixteen times a day, and is reportedly the first time the US military has confirmed publicly drones are present at this base.

To the extent that there is a difference in foreign policy between the two Presidential candidates at this point, it’s that Mitt Romney wants to implement the same exact policies as Barack Obama, but just spend $2 trillion more on defense contracting to carry it out.