• Secret US assassination drone base in Saudi Arabia exposed. The existence of a previously secret US assassination drone base in Saudi Arabia has come to light amid President Barack Obama’s bid to install his counterterrorism adviser and architect of his covert targeted-killing policy, John Brennan, as the next CIA director. CIA terror drones flown out of a secret American base in Saudi Arabia were used to carry out the “only strike intentionally targeting a US citizen” to kill Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son in a 2011 attack in Yemen, The Washington Post reports on Wednesday.
In other news
• Eric Cantor Rebrands the Republican Party by Plagiarizing a 2011 Obama Speech. Cantor plagiarized Obama’s speech with the intention of co-opting the president’s language. Eric Cantor wanted to attach the same stale Republican ideas to the language of Obama. A side by side comparison of the two speeches reveals the hollowness of this technique. Obama’s speech followed the language with examples and policy proposals. Eric Cantor’s speech was full of attempts to relate to the common man and families, but specific ideas were mostly missing. This omission was intentional. Cantor is only interested in changing the tone of the Republican Party, not the policies.
• US lawmakers have moved toward freeing up $1.1 billion to boost America’s diplomatic security, just as new Secretary of State John Kerry vowed to work to improve safety at missions around the world. The US Senate late Monday approved a State Department request to dip into unused funds that had been allocated for Iraq to upgrade US embassies in hotspots and provide more security staff. The move comes in the wake of an internal review into the September 11 attack on the US mission in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi that saw the ambassador and three other Americans killed.
• Norman Hughes, a member of the North Oakland Tea Party Patriots, spoke on the topic of “school choice: “Kids aren’t going to charter schools if they’re ‘A’ students. They go to charter schools because they’re failing students and, by and large, the charter schools have a higher percentage of poor families, ‘ethnically challenged’ families.”
• Niger has confirmed that French special forces are protecting one of the country’s biggest uranium mines.
• A series of clashes between anti-Islamist protesters and police that began on the second anniversary of Egypt’s revolt has snowballed into a much broader tide of anger toward the police force. Opposition leaders and rights groups say police used excessive force over 10 days of clashes that left more than 60 people dead across the country.
• Canadian accused in deadly Hezbollah-linked bus bomb attack in Bulgaria. In the span of just a few weeks, Canadians have been accused of playing lead roles in two major international terrorist attacks. Bulgaria’s interior minister on Tuesday announced that Canadian and Australian passport holders were among the suspects in a Hezbollah-linked bus bomb attack that killed five Israeli tourists last summer.
F.D.Brightly
Drone war
Shorter Question Everything
• Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans. [PDF]
• Secret US assassination drone base in Saudi Arabia exposed. The existence of a previously secret US assassination drone base in Saudi Arabia has come to light amid President Barack Obama’s bid to install his counterterrorism adviser and architect of his covert targeted-killing policy, John Brennan, as the next CIA director. CIA terror drones flown out of a secret American base in Saudi Arabia were used to carry out the “only strike intentionally targeting a US citizen” to kill Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son in a 2011 attack in Yemen, The Washington Post reports on Wednesday.
In other news
• Eric Cantor Rebrands the Republican Party by Plagiarizing a 2011 Obama Speech. Cantor plagiarized Obama’s speech with the intention of co-opting the president’s language. Eric Cantor wanted to attach the same stale Republican ideas to the language of Obama. A side by side comparison of the two speeches reveals the hollowness of this technique. Obama’s speech followed the language with examples and policy proposals. Eric Cantor’s speech was full of attempts to relate to the common man and families, but specific ideas were mostly missing. This omission was intentional. Cantor is only interested in changing the tone of the Republican Party, not the policies.
• US lawmakers have moved toward freeing up $1.1 billion to boost America’s diplomatic security, just as new Secretary of State John Kerry vowed to work to improve safety at missions around the world. The US Senate late Monday approved a State Department request to dip into unused funds that had been allocated for Iraq to upgrade US embassies in hotspots and provide more security staff. The move comes in the wake of an internal review into the September 11 attack on the US mission in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi that saw the ambassador and three other Americans killed.
• Norman Hughes, a member of the North Oakland Tea Party Patriots, spoke on the topic of “school choice: “Kids aren’t going to charter schools if they’re ‘A’ students. They go to charter schools because they’re failing students and, by and large, the charter schools have a higher percentage of poor families, ‘ethnically challenged’ families.”
• Niger has confirmed that French special forces are protecting one of the country’s biggest uranium mines.
• Dick Morris has been let go by Fox News.
• A series of clashes between anti-Islamist protesters and police that began on the second anniversary of Egypt’s revolt has snowballed into a much broader tide of anger toward the police force. Opposition leaders and rights groups say police used excessive force over 10 days of clashes that left more than 60 people dead across the country.
• Canadian accused in deadly Hezbollah-linked bus bomb attack in Bulgaria. In the span of just a few weeks, Canadians have been accused of playing lead roles in two major international terrorist attacks. Bulgaria’s interior minister on Tuesday announced that Canadian and Australian passport holders were among the suspects in a Hezbollah-linked bus bomb attack that killed five Israeli tourists last summer.