According to one U.S.  official, “blond-haired, blue-eyed types,” with American passports, are among those training in Al-Qaeda’s Yemen camps, reports the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia: A Ticking Time Bomb, released yesterday.
If it was not clear already, this information only makes it only more obvious that racially profiling at [...]

FBI agents seeking phone records used ’startling’ methods – washingtonpost.com
FBI agents seeking telephone records demanded information from phone companies in a variety of “startling” and illicit methods, including e-mail and post-it notes, in an “egregious breakdown” of safeguards and oversight, the Justice Department’s inspector general reported Wednesday.
The long-awaited investigative report describes numerous lapses by FBI [...]

From Justin Logan:
I don’t really have much to add, so I’ll reproduce post entirely:
Bad Intelligence–But in Which Direction? | Cato @ Liberty
Since the topic of the day seems to be right-wing anger at insufficiently panicky intelligence assessments on Iran, it might be worth looking at how bad U.S. intelligence on Iran is–and in which direction [...]

From Max Boot:
Commentary » Blog Archive » The Need for Getting Good at Nation Building
Problem is, the U.S. government still lacks the right resources and structures to tackle effectively the difficult task of state-building (or, as it is popularly known, “nation building”) in the Third World.
I find this sort of essay tremendously disheartening. Boot [...]

In this article, The New York Times reports that in recognition of the potential national security implications of climate change, the Obama Administration has quietly endorsed the renewal of Medea (Measurements of Earth Data for Environmental Analysis). This program has facilitated collaboration between the intelligence and scientific communities to understand climate trends through the use [...]

Washington, DC – The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recently re-launched a program to share surveillance and other data with scientists monitoring climate change.  Images from spy satellites—declassified and degraded—will be invaluable to scientists as they monitor the effects of climate change on sea ice, glaciers, tropical rainforests, and other natural phenomena.  While some have criticized [...]

Matt Yglesias links to the following piece from Spencer Ackerman:
Analysts Question Al-Qaeda Efforts at Counterterrorism Center « The Washington Independent
Only half of NCTC’s roughly 300 analysts focus directly on al-Qaeda — with some analyzing terror groups that do not threaten the United States, like the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka or the Hamas radicals of [...]

From Bruce Hoffman:
Al-Qaeda has a new strategy. Obama needs one, too. – washingtonpost.com
Remarkably, more than eight years after Sept. 11, we still don’t fully understand our dynamic and evolutionary enemy. We claim success when it is regrouping and tally killed leaders while more devious plots are being hatched. Al-Qaeda needs to be utterly destroyed. This [...]

A recent New York Times article, highlighted the plight of the victims of climate change, who are forced to leave their homes due to changes in weather patterns, flooding, encroaching sea waters, and desertification.  Because people displaced by climate change do not qualify for refugee status and often have very limited funds, internal migration from effected [...]

If the Afghanistan “surge” and new comprehensive strategy are to succeed, we need to make sure civilian efforts are coordinated and thereby achieve maximum impact. This will ensure that we can apply collective international pressure on President Karzai, and that our resources achieve maximum effectiveness.
See: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-12-17/whos-watching-karzai/
A few excerpts : 
“In his standard command briefing, Gen. Stanley McChrystal points [...]