Today's Headlines and Commentary

Shocker! The AP reports that Al Shabab has formally joined Al Qaeda, according to a video message by Ayman al-Zawahri. Here are CNN and BBC on the latest in jihadist mergers. The DC Circuit Review comments on the recently-released Suleiman opinion, which Ben weighed in on here. As Raffaela noted yesterday, the AP covers the mail-monitoring suit filed by James Connell on behalf of his client, Ammar al Baluchi, who also happens to be the nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Josh Gerstein at the Politico reports that Jesse Morton, aka Younus Abdullah Mohammad, has agreed to plead guilty for making illegal threats against the creators of South Park for depicting the Prophet Mohammad in--you guessed it--a bear suit. Here is the New York Times' coverage of the House Armed Services subommittee's report on transfers from Guantanamo Bay. Like Ben, they too, seem to think it is pretty uninteresting: "Besides the history of detainee policies, the unclassified report largely discusses statistics and examples of 're-engagement' that were already public." The Washington Post has this piece about the intelligence the United States has lost since the drone strike that killed Samir Khan, editor of the Al Qaeda magazine Inspire. Turns out it "gave analysts at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other agencies a glimpse into AQAP’s agenda, as well as its roster." Dead men give no intel. Speaking of dead men, the AP reports that "Pakistan has arrested two people in connection with last year's assassination of a former Afghan president who was trying to broker peace with the Taliban." Former director of Afghanistan's National Security Directorate Amrullah Saleh has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that "Washington's olive branch to the Taliban—no matter the excuses or justifications—amounts to the management of failure, not the mark of victory." And do you wonder what ordinary Americans think of the civilian drones coming to our skies? Find the answer in today's Moment of Zen. For more interesting law and security-related articles, follow us on Twitter, visit the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law’s Security Law Brief, Fordham Law’s Center on National Security’s Morning Brief, and Fordham Law’s new Cyber Brief. Email us noteworthy articles we may have missed at  wakeman.lawfare@gmail.com  and  singh.lawfare@gmail.com.