Having directed big-budget action thrillers like “The Bourne Identity” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” Doug Liman is taking a grassroots approach to a new project meant to raise awareness about real-life violence, politics and torture.

The American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal court Wednesday to force the Obama administration to release legal and intelligence records related to the killing of three U.S. citizens in drone attacks in Yemen last year.

January 24, 2012 "Salon" --  Developments in three legal cases, just from the last 24 hours, potently illuminate the Rules of American Justice.

The trial of 9/11 suspects has hit another roadblock. 

To refrain accountability, and continue its illegal global war, U.S. government officials have two walls to protect themselves behind: say secrecy, and propaganda/ psychological operations. When the first surround is penetrated, as Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks have done, and as justice Ellsberg did during the Vietnam era, it turns to propaganda, and psychological operations, (telling outright lies, spinning half-truths, character assassination, accusing others of treachery and wrong-doing).

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.

The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit by five victims of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program against Jeppesen Dataplan, a unit of Boeing. The six-five ruling adopts as a rationale the anti-democratic “state secrets” doctrine advocated by the Obama administration.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a report Monday absolving the FBI of charges that agents conducted investigations of domestic groups based on their exercise of First Amendment rights.

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.

WASHINGTON — Two human rights organizations went to court on Monday to challenge the Obama administration’s decision to authorize the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric now hiding in Yemen.

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.