Today's Headlines and Commentary

As Ben noted this morning, the Times reports on the apparent U.S.-Afghanistan agreement on detainees. Here's more from the Associated Press and Agence France Presse. Here's a new way to go after Al Qaeda: Ignore the leadership, but prosecute the leadership's numerous wives for illegal immigration. That's apparently the new strategy in Pakistan, which (knowingly or unknowingly) tolerated Osama Bin Laden's presence for years but which, according to Reuters, is now charging three of bin Laden's five widows with "illegally entering and living in the country." Meanwhile, the AP reports that Pakistan's notorious intelligence agency has a new chief, "injecting some uncertainty in America's dealings with an agency crucial to its hopes of negotiating a peace deal with the Afghan Taliban and keeping pressure on al-Qaida." The Washington Times informs us of yet another report describing the threat of Chinese cyberterrorism. Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, writes on Holder's speech in the Washington Times, arguing that the Obama administration's logic "is more worthy of Joseph Stalin than Thomas Jefferson. It effectively says that the president is above the Constitution and the rule of law and that he can reject his oath to uphold both." Josh Gerstein reports that "the federal prosecutor appointed to investigate the abuse and death of detainees in the custody of the Central Intelligence Agency is backing the CIA's efforts to keep its internal probes of those incidents secret." More on the NYPD's surveillance of Muslims: this New York Times editorial argues that "[Ramond] Kelly. . . should not [defend the NYPD] so loudly that he drowns out reasonable criticisms." And this op-ed by Richard Clarke, Judith Miller, and R.P. Eddy in the Wall Street Journal asserts that "New York's finest are getting smeared." In case you've been on the lookout for English-language Al Qaeda videos, CNN's Security Clearance blog tells us that there haven't been any since 2010. How sad. And in case you were still unsure about whether the Anwar al-Awlaki memo actually exists, this exchage between Senator Patrick Leahy and Eric Holder yesterday, reported by the Times, should send you over the edge. And, from America's Finest News Source comes today's Moment of Zen about the many ways U.S. relations with North Korea will improve now that Kim Jong Un and his gang have agreed to suspend their nuclear weapons program in exchange for food aid. 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.