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Former U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) urged the Obama administration on Sunday to release the private legal memo sanctioning the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen and al Qaeda leader in Yemen. "The Justice Department should release that memo," said Harman, director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee. "The debate on the legal grounds for that strategy should be more in the open." Speaking on CNN's "State of the Union," Harman said the "targeted killing of anyone should give us pause," but that the al-Awlaki was a "good...

Former vice president Dick Cheney on Sunday called last week’s CIA drone strike against al-Qaeda operative Anwar Awlaki a validation of the George W. Bush administration’s terrorist-fighting strategy, and said that President Obama should apologize for his past criticism of those policies. Cheney endorsed the killing of Awlaki as “justified,” despite Awlaki’s U.S. citizenship, and suggested that the Obama White House was being hypocritical when it approved a deadly strike against the New Mexico-born Awlaki while condemning Bush’s use of so-called enhanced interrogation methods of al-Qaeda prisoners.

SNIPPET: "AN EXTREMIST Islamic group suspected of planning a crime spree across Sydney to raise money for the Taliban has been uncovered by counter-terrorism police. The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that NSW Police and national security agencies have been investigating the group members for over a year, with the case currently active. The extremists have been the subject of a top secret operation led by the NSW Police Force, ASIO, Australian Federal Police and the NSW Crime Commission. A group of men, aged between 20 and 30, all Australian citizens of Middle Eastern-descent, have been identified as the core members."...

.....I don't trust Obama with determining what protections I should be allowed as a citizen any more than I trust him with our general defense, the economy, health care, job growth - or anything else. The usual justification for such abuse of the rule of law is that the post-9/11 period demands a different code of conduct to ensure people's safety. But politicians can always find excuses for why they should be allowed to disobey the Constitution..... Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/10/02/2011-10-02_an_unconstitutional_killing.html#ixzz1Zeydd8Ny

Judge Napolitano, "When the president can kill whoever he wants, he's not a president anymore, he's a King." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnem1Ohm3Q0&feature=player_embedded

Liberals are up in arms over the Al-Awlaki killing. And so are many conservatives... Uber liberal Glenn Greenwald sums up the case against Obama, leveling the charge of Due-Process-Free Assassination: No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was “considering” indicting him). Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even had any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt. This controversy involves two questions. One of law, and one of motives and legitimacy. Let's look...

Here are two facts: (1) Anwar al-Awlaki is an American citizen and an al-Qaeda propagandist. (2) Pres. Barack Obama proposes to assassinate him. Between the first fact and the second falls the shadow. The Awlaki case has led many conservatives into dangerous error, as has the War on Terror more generally. That conservatives are for the most part either offering mute consent or cheering as the Obama administration draws up a list of U.S. citizens to be assassinated suggests not only that have we gone awry in our thinking about national security, limitations on state power, and the role of...

Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, on Friday criticized the Obama administration’s action in killing Anwar Awlaki, the American-born cleric who advocated jihad against the United States. Paul was the strongest critic on the Republican side in condemning the attack, which was praised by other candidates including Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a libertarian like Paul, also questioned the tactic of killing a U.S. citizen without due process.

The New York Times reports this morning that officials in both Yemen and Washington claim that American-born Al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki has reached room temperature somewhere in Yemen: In a significant and dramatic strike in the campaign against Al Qaeda, the Defense Ministry here said American-born preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, a leading figure in the group’s outpost in Yemen, was killed on Friday morning.In Washington a senior Obama administration official confirmed that Mr. Awlaki was dead. But the circumstances surrounding the killing remained unclear.It was not immediately known whether Yemeni forces carried out the attack or if American intelligence forces, which have been...

The most important thing to know about the "death by drone" of Anwar al-Awlaki is that this is really about citizenship and anchor babies. Anwar, America's enemy, is a US citizen by virtue of his Yemeni dad pursuing higher education in the US at the time of Anwar's birth. Anwar was born in New Mexico in April of 1971. That made him a US citizen. It doesn't matter that he returned to Yemen and that his parents had no intention of ever becoming US citizens while they lived here. What matters is the address of the hospital in which little...

The US-born radical Islamist cleric and suspected al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki has been killed in Yemen, the country's defence ministry has said. A statement said only that he died "along with some of his companions".

The U.S. nearly took out Anwar Al-Awlaki, a top Al Qaeda target in Yemen, in an assassination attempt days after the killing of Usama bin Laden, senior U.S. defense and intelligence sources tell Fox News. On May 5, Marine Harrier jets were sent on a mission to follow Awlaki using intelligence provided by Yemenis hoping to keep President Ali Abdullah Saleh in power. The aircraft were able to locate Awlaki traveling in a truck. But fuel storage and technical problems with the jets’ Griffin missiles – a new and improved version of a Hellfire missile -- caused the operation to...

I never give time frames, because you never know where you'll have sufficient evidence to go public with a prosecution, " Mueller said.

The American-born Jihadist cleric Anwar Awlaki likely played an important support role in the September 11 attacks nearly ten years ago, according to a new book that examines the threat of home-grown terrorism. The book, “The Next Wave,” by Fox News national security reporter, Catherine Herridge, reveals new documents that find Mr. Awlaki was nearly arrested after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon for providing false information on his passport application. Today Mr. Awlaki is one of the leaders of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Mr. Awlaki is also the only known American citizen on a...

“The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Then Sen. Obama 2007 talking about a possible war against Iran Obama, the peace president, has now begun his fourth war in Yemen. No imminent threat here. His third war in Libya is not going great and there’s no imminent threat there either. In a story with little national coverage, the media has just learned that Obama has started a 4th war in Yemen. It’s a story for perhaps...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has intensified the American covert war in Yemen, exploiting a growing power vacuum in the country to strike at militant suspects with armed drones and fighter jets, according to American officials. The acceleration of the American campaign in recent weeks comes amid a violent conflict in Yemen that has left the government in Sana, a United States ally, struggling to cling to power. Yemeni troops that had been battling militants linked to Al Qaeda in the south have been pulled back to the capital, and American officials see the strikes as one of the few...

U.S. Drone Strike in Yemen Reportedly Was Aimed at Radical Cleric Seen as Post-Bin Laden Threat Published May 06, 2011 | The Wall Street Journal A U.S. drone strike in Yemen on Thursday was aimed at killing Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical cleric who is suspected of orchestrating terrorist attacks on the U.S, but the missile missed its target, Yemeni and U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal. The drone strike comes less than a week after U.S. Navy SEALs killed Usama bin Laden at a compound in Pakistan. Had the drone strike in Yemen been successful, the U.S. would...

SNIPPET: "An examination of online activities by binyamine leads to the conclusion that he is likely involved with Dar al-Murabiteen, and that he links multiple terrorist networks together through his work translating, transcribing, and distributing jihadi media content. He is linked, in no particular order, to • Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan • The Pakistan and Afghan Taliban • as-Sahab, al-Emara, and al-Malahem media outfits • al-Shabaab and their al-Qimmah forum This is what Granovetter meant by a bridging weak tie - the kind of "weak" tie that is strong, as he links multiple networks. Among other things, all this...

You might think that a top terrorist targeted for assassination by the Obama administration would be on the FBI’s list of “Most Wanted Terrorists.” You might think he would be under indictment by the Department of Justice, which has a penchant for prosecuting war criminals in civil court. But in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), you’d be wrong. United States counterterrorism officials agree that Awlaki, a dual U.S.-Yemeni citizen, is one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists. Attorney General Eric Holder says Awlaki is right up there with Osama bin Laden. It...

In the bookstore I run, I used to carry lectures on CD by Anwar al-Awlaki. That's the pre-radical al-Awlaki, who recorded lectures about prophets and the hereafter and Islam in general. Now, that al-Awlaki is gone and has been replaced by a terrorist who publicly justifies killing American civilians. ...I was most worried about what the public, the authorities, and other Muslims would think. On the other hand, by removing the CDs I was censoring, and censorship is, generally speaking, a bad thing. I asked a retired bookseller friend what she thought... She recalled that when her store was open...