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Facing Senate Uproar, Obama Admin to Release Memo Justifying Drone Killings of Americans Overseas. The Obama administration says it will release the secret government memo that authorizes the killings of Americans overseas. A federal appeals court ordered the memo’s disclosure last month following a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times seeking the drone strikes’ legal basis. The White House decided not to appeal the ruling after several senators vowed to hold up a judicial nomination of the memo’s author, David Barron. But the memo’s release will be delayed as the administration redacts extensive portions it says contain classified information.
Revealed: Counter-Terrorism ‘Fusion Centers’ Went After Occupy. U.S. government Fusion Centers, which operate as ill-defined “counter-terrorism” intelligence gathering and sharing centers, conducted spy operations against Occupy protesters involving police, the Pentagon, the FBI, military employees, and business people. So finds a report released Friday by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund based on 4,000 public documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The release was accompanied by an in-depth article by the New York Times.
Justice Stevens’s Bold Vision to Reclaim Our Democracy. John Paul Stevens, retired justice of the US Supreme Court, appeared recently before the US Senate to argue for a constitutional amendment to limit money in politics. In fact, Justice Stevens is calling for a great deal of change, which he describes in a new book, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.
Sources: Common Dreams, Democracy Now, Truthout.
Paul Brown is a retired neuroscience professor whose primary interests are human rights, overpopulation, mass extinction, global warming, and the military-industrial complex. Links to all his Before It’s News articles are at /contributor/pages/189/210/stories.html.