By Rand Paul
Obama acts as though we no longer have a Constitution
A man claiming to be al Qaeda's No. 2 in Yemen released an audio denying reports that he had died in a U.S. drone attack, as Yemeni officials said Monday that another top member of the terror network was killed in a drone strike earlier this month.
An airstrike Wednesday killed 15 al Qaeda-linked militants in their training camp in the country's south, Yemeni military officials said. The airstrike resembled earlier U.S. drone attacks, but the U.S. did not comment.
Yemeni government troops fought their way into the center of an al-Qaeda-held city in the lawless south after a fierce, six-hour battle that ended early Tuesday, military officials said.
Yemeni government forces regained control of a strategic gateway in the south on Tuesday after an intense, three-day shelling of al Qaeda hideouts in the area that left 43 militants dead, military and medical officials said.
The Obama administration is considering whether to allow Yemen's outgoing president into the U.S. for medical treatment, as fresh violence and political tensions flare in the strategically important Middle Eastern nation.
Yemeni government forces opened fire Tuesday on protesters in Sanaa, killing seven, a medical official said, a day after the capital witnessed its worst fighting in weeks.
Taking Anwar al-Awlaki alive would have presented a difficult challenge for U.S. government prosecutors seeking a terrorism conviction, legal experts say.
Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Islamic militant cleric who became a prominent figure in al Qaeda's most active branch, using his fluent English and Internet savvy to draw recruits to carry out attacks in the United States, was killed Friday in the mountains of Yemen, American and Yemeni officials said.
At the swearing-in of a new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Obama said the death Friday of al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen shows the terror network "will find no safe haven anywhere in the world."
Yemeni government forces on Wednesday fired mortars at tens of thousands of mourners at funerals held for protesters killed in clashes and attacked an opposition base, shattering a cease-fire negotiated a day earlier to end the Arab nation's latest bout of deadly violence.
Yemeni government forces in the capital opened fire with anti-aircraft guns and automatic weapons on tens of thousands of anti-government protesters demanding the ouster of their longtime ruler. At least 12 demonstrators were killed and dozens wounded, witnesses said.
Dozens of Syrian opposition members on Sunday called on President Bashar Assad to end his deadly six-month crackdown or face an escalation in peaceful protests, as security forces fired warning shots to disperse high school students calling for the regime's downfall.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has left a hospital in Saudi Arabia more than two months after being severely wounded in an attack on his palace compound in Sanaa, the capital, Yemen's state news agency said Sunday.
Yemeni government forces shelled a southern town overrun by radical Islamists, killing at least 20 militants in the past two days, residents said Tuesday.
