FBI Director Jim Comey has appointed Jim Baker as FBI General Counsel.  This is an outstanding appointment.  The announcement is here. Jim Baker is one of the most experienced and conscientious intellig...

Over at the New Republic, Sean Wilentz has this fascinating long piece about the ideologies of Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Glenn Greenwald.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of recording a podcast discussion organized by the National Constitution Center on NSA, the President's speech on Friday, and the Review Group report. My interlocutor was Pe...

The estimable Gregory Johnsen has a lengthy article in Buzzfeed about the history of the AUMF. Entitled "60 Words and War Without End: The Untold Story of the Most Dangerous Sentence in U.S. History," th...

In his excellent analysis of the President's NSA speech and PPD-28, Ben suggests that there is less than meets the eye to the President's promise not to listen in on the conversations of foreign leaders ...

President Obama's speech on Friday and its accompanying Presidential Policy Directive (PDD-28) cover a lot of ground, announce a bunch of reforms, announce plans and direction for more, and kick still ot...

Yesterday’s New York Times editorial about the President’s speech faults the President for failing to give credit to Edward Snowden: One of his biggest lapses was his refusal to acknowledge that his enti...

I had two reactions to President Obama's address,  one general and another specific. First the general.  President Obama made a good speech today, both for what he said and what he didn't say.  He has a...

The President’s speech and accompanying Policy Directive together announce all manner of changes; it will take a while to grasp them all. In the meantime, here's an off-the-cuff reaction: I reckon we wil...

Huawei Denies US Compromised Security Equipment.  Here's the opening of this report from Australia: Chinese tech giant Huawei, which has long been dogged by security suspicions, has denied a report its t...

Hmmmm. Here's a very interesting few paragraphs from the Wall Street Journal: The president's speech, to be delivered at the Justice Department, caps a process that was similar to the one he undertook on...

Last fall, during the debate on airstrikes in Syria, commentators argued that the United States needed to act in order to preserve the credibility of American threats.