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?

Yesterday, the Supreme Court shut the door on a legal odyssey that lasted over six years, when they refused to reopen a case attempting to hold private telecommunications companies accountable for their participation in the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.

At a speech today before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney will attack the President for intelligence leaks designed to bolster the Administration’s foreign policy record. But his choice of leaks to criticize is baffling.

I’ve pretty much said what I want to say about the Fast and Furious situation and the looming vote holding Eric Holder in contempt by Darrell Issa. I think it’s fairly clear at this point that ATF letting guns walk to track them was a bad strategy badly executed. That’s why the head of ATF resigned. Where Holder fits into the picture is unclear to me, but certainly Darrell Issa wants him front and center, as a means to embarrass the White House.

The Justice Department has appointed two prosecutors to investigate recent leaks over the Predator drone program, the foiled Underpants Bomb II attack and cyberwarfare against Iran. I wonder how the prosecutors will go about arresting the leak sources, including the PR agents for the President’s “tough on national security” re-election campaign.

There’s a lot that can be said about the NYT article on the Administration drone program, especially by Glenn Greenwald. The Administration has minimized admitted civilian casualties by changing semantics, using the term militants to refer to all adult males within a particular kill zone. And Marcy Wheeler adds that John Brennan has been proven as a liar through this article on the subject of civilian casualties. I want to focus on the incredible context of secrecy for this article.

The ACLU is trying to get information about the CIA drone program, filing FOIA requests that have so far been denied. This is the subject of two lawsuits in Washington and New York. The government is now arguing that previous administration statements, including by then CIA Director Panetta, did not concede the program’s existence, even though it did.

The ACLU filed suit in federal court yesterday seeking to force the White House to turn over records related to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the US citizen assassinated in a drone attack in Yemen last year.

A federal court has upheld on appeal a ruling that telecom companies can receive legal immunity from Congress for participating in the warrantless wiretapping program under George W. Bush.

When Anwar al-Awlaki’s family sued for due process, the government invoked state secrets, even as Crazy Pete Hoekstra and a stream of anonymous sources have leaked details of the drone targeting of him for over a year. One of the things Robert Gates specifically invoked state secrets over is whether or not we’re engaged in military operations in Yemen. Another is details of our counterterrorism work with Yemen.