By Rand Paul
Obama acts as though we no longer have a Constitution
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
The number of names in a secret U.S. database of suspected terrorists has swollen to 875,000 from 540,000 only five years ago, in part because of rule changes introduced after al Qaeda's failed underwear bomb plot in 2009.
Before the Boston Marathon bombings, the Obama administration argued for years that there is a big difference between terrorists and the tenets of Islam.
Despite President Obama's best efforts to focus the country on top domestic priorities, the Boston bombings have thrust the war on terrorism back to the top of his agenda, and the renewed focus on protecting the homeland will test his national security team and their reliance on the criminal justice system in handling terrorism suspects.
The deadly bombs that struck the Boston Marathon on Monday were fashioned from large pressure cookers packed with nails and ball bearings and hidden in black bags on the ground, said FBI investigators and a U.S. official briefed on the investigation.
Monday's bomb attack on the Boston Marathon showed a "level of sophistication or training" in the construction and placement of the weapons that could complicate the identification of the culprits, said a former FBI agent who led the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
John O. Brennan, President Obama's pick to lead the CIA, defended the administration's drone execution program before Congress on Thursday, saying that in war the commander in chief has the right to order a targeted killing — but agreeing that Congress should be more involved in knowing what is happening.
Uh-oh. The next power suit on Capitol Hill may be a loud sports jacket.
On Sept. 11, the nation remembers that fateful day in 2001 when the earth shook, the buildings fell and the innocent were slain. On that day, we vowed as a nation to bring to justice, or bring justice to, those who committed the acts of terrorism. We did.
Al Qaeda's top bomb maker in Yemen is so ruthless that he recruited and equipped his own brother for an underwear-bomb suicide attack against a top Saudi royal in 2009.
An airstrike Sunday killed a top al Qaeda leader on the FBI's most-wanted list for his role in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole warship, Yemeni officials said. The airstrike resembled earlier U.S. drone attacks, but the United States did not immediately confirm it.
One year after Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, a weakened, fragmented al Qaeda is collaborating with other terrorist and militant groups to target and attack U.S. and Western interests abroad, intelligence officials say.
A federal judge ordered life in prison Thursday for a Nigerian Muslim who turned away from a privileged life and tried to blow up a packed international flight with a bomb concealed in his underwear.
A Nigerian who pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a Detroit-bound plane began his path to terrorism with a text message from a top al-Qaida figure in Yemen, the U.S. government said Friday in a court filing that discloses new details about their relationship.
Even as the Obama administration says it's close to defeating al Qaeda, the size of the government's secret list of suspected terrorists who are banned from flying to or within the United States has more than doubled in the past year, the Associated Press has learned.
From Occupy Wall Street to the Joplin tornado, the debt-ceiling battle and the killing of Osama bin Laden, 2011 will not soon be forgotten.
"The system has repeatedly proven that it can successfully handle the threat that we continue to face," he said, noting that it's illegal for Tsarnaev to be tried in anything but a civilian court because he is a U.S. citizen.
Attack on Boston puts Obama's anti-terrorism policy to the test →
Anthony Chambers, an attorney assigned to help Abdulmutallab, said a mandatory life sentence was cruel and unconstitutional punishment for a crime that didn't physically hurt anyone except Abdulmutallab.
