Andy Worthington reports on a US judge's distressing failure to challenge the Obama administration's "targeted killing" programme for US citizens.

The Obama administration, fresh off a victory in persuading federal judges to dismiss a torture case for fear of revealing state secrets, is divided over using similar tactics to try to block a lawsuit over government efforts to kill an American citizen accused of ties to Al Qaeda.

At this point, I didn't believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record.  In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki's father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late last night,according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims. 

Nine years into what the US used to call the "global war on terror," the nation still cannot agree on how to describe the struggle, how to characterise it, or on a logically consistent set of tools and procedures to conduct it. To some, this might seem unacceptable. I, however, would be far more critical if I did not harbor some degree of ambivalence myself.

Al-Aulaqi v. Obama: Glenn Greenwald analyses legal challenges by the ACLU and CCR against the US government's sanctioning of the targetting of Anwar al-Awlaki

This video from the American Civil Liberties Union condemns the U.S. government practice of issuing death sentences without due process as part of its targeted killing policy. "Targeted Killing" is being released to coincide with the filing today of an unprecedented lawsuit by the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) challenging the government's asserted authority to use lethal force against U.S. citizens located far from any battlefield without judicial process, and without disclosing the standards it uses to target individuals for death.

The Obama administration is in danger of entrenching some of the most draconian aspects of the Bush administration's controversial national security policy, warns a new report, [press release] from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released Thursday.