Memo justifying drone killings is released
NEW YORK – The secret U.S. government memo outlining the justification for the use of drones to kill American terror suspects abroad was released by court order Monday, yielding the most detailed, inside look yet at the legal underpinnings of the Obama administration’s program of “targeted killings.”
The 41-page memo – whose contents had previously been summarized and released piecemeal – was heavily redacted for national-security reasons, with several entire pages and other passages whited out.
But it argues among other things that a targeted killing of a U.S. citizen is permissible under a 2001 law passed by Congress soon after Sept. 11. That law empowered the president to use force against organizations that planned and committed the attacks.
“The release of the memo will allow the public to better assess the lawfulness of the government’s targeted killing policy and the implications of that policy,” said Jameel Jaffer, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who argued for release of the memo.
Whistleblowers’ charges downplayed by VA
WASHINGTON – A top federal investigator has identified “a troubling pattern of deficient patient care” at Veterans Affairs facilities around the country that she says was pointed out by whistleblowers but downplayed by the department.
The problems went far beyond the extraordinarily long wait time for some appointments – and the attempts to cover them up – that has put the department under intense scrutiny.
In a letter Monday to President Barack Obama, Carolyn Lerner of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel cited canceled appointments with no follow up, drinking water contaminated with the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease and improper handling of surgical equipment and supplies. One veteran was admitted to a long-term mental health facility but didn’t get a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation for eight years.
Acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson said he had launched a departmental review due to be completed within 14 days.
“I am deeply disappointed not only in the substantiation of allegations raised by whistleblowers, but also in the failures within VA to take whistleblower complaints seriously,” he said in a statement.
Justices rap EPA; uphold climate rules
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court largely left intact Monday the Obama administration’s only existing program to limit power-plant and factory emissions of the gases blamed for global warming. But a divided court also rebuked environmental regulators for taking too much authority into their own hands without congressional approval.
The justices said in a 5-4 vote along ideological lines that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot apply a permitting provision of the Clean Air Act to new and expanded power plants, refineries and factories solely because they emit greenhouse gases.
The decision underscores the limits of using the Clean Air Act to deal with greenhouse gases and the administration’s inability to get climate change legislation through Congress.
The EPA and many environmental advocates said the ruling would not affect the agency’s proposals for first-time national standards for new and existing power plants. The most recent proposal aims at a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants by 2030, but won’t take effect for at least another two years.
Egypt sentences 3 reporters to prison
CAIRO – An Egyptian court Monday convicted three Al-Jazeera journalists and sentenced them to seven years in prison on terrorism-related charges after a trial dismissed by human-rights groups as a politically motivated sham. The verdict brought a landslide of international condemnation and calls for the newly elected president to intervene.
The ruling stunned the defendants and their families, many of whom had hoped their loved ones would be released because of international pressure on the case. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who a day earlier had discussed the case in a meeting with President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, denounced the verdict as “chilling and draconian.”
The unprecedented trial of journalists on terror charges was tied up in the government’s fierce crackdown on Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood since the ouster last year of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi by el-Sissi, then the army chief. Further fueling accusations that the trial was politically motivated is the Egyptian government’s deep enmity with the Gulf nation Qatar, which was a close ally of Morsi and which owns the Al-Jazeera network.
Prosecutors had accused the three – Australian Peter Greste, Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohammed – of promoting or belonging to the Brotherhood and of falsifying their coverage of protests by Morsi’s supporters to hurt Egypt’s security and make it appear the country is sliding into civil war. The government has branded the Brotherhood a terrorist organization.
Associated Press
