Senator Ted Cruz praised Senator Rand Paul on the Senate floor today for his filibuster. "Your standing here today like a modern Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," said Cruz, referencing the famous film, "must surely be making Jimmy Stewart smile."
"My only regret," Cruz continued, "is that there are not 99 of your colleagues here today standing with you in defense of the most fundamental principle in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution."
Paul's filibuster has been going on for almost 4 hours, and only recently have other senators joined the floor to ask Paul questions.
Former press secretary Robert Gibbs said this morning on MSNBC that he was told, when he became a White House official, "not even to acknowledge the drone program":
Iran is claiming to have successfully "hunted" an American drone, according to a piece in the regime organ Fars News Agency. The propaganda outlet claims that this is the first time Iran has shot down an American drone.
The U.N. wants to use drones, the French news agency Agence France-Presse reports. "The United Nations wants to use drones for the first time to monitor fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where Rwanda has been accused of aiding rebels," says the report, quoting U.N. officials.
In a press conference today, Barack Obama was asked:
And speaking of Iran, are you concerned that it will be able to weaken America’s national security by discovering intelligence from the fallen drone that it captured?
Noah Shachtman reports for Wired that "A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America’s Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other warzones."
The New York Times reports that al Qaeda's number 2, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, has been killed by a CIA drone:
A drone operated by the Central Intelligence Agency killed Al Qaeda’s second-ranking figure in the mountains of Pakistan on Monday, American and Pakistani officials said Saturday, further damaging a terrorism network that appears significantly weakened since the death of Osama bin Laden in May.
Bruce Riedel, who today defends the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, claiming that it’s a viable alternative to the current regime, said some silly things in a recent speech delivered at Tufts Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy.
Legal activist groups filed an extraordinary lawsuit yesterday to prevent the U.S. military and CIA from undertaking the "targeted killing" of persons suspected of posing a terrorist threat to the U.S.
Conservatives are fond of denigrating Barack Obama as a foreign policy wimp, a president determined to demonstrate American weakness around the world, one begging for dialogue with dictators, and apologizing for past American sins, real and imagined. Even if overdrawn, there has been justification for this line of criticism.
Conservatives are fond of denigrating Barack Obama as a foreign policy wimp, a president determined to demonstrate American weakness around the world, one begging for dialogue with dictators, and apologizing for past American sins, real and imagined. Even if overdrawn, there has been justification for this line of criticism.