(With) UAVs being increasingly controlled by automated systems and operated from the comfort of a command center, the decision to release weapons can be made by an entire team, usually including a lawyer.  “The pilot is a mere [...]]]> The Harvard Law Record weighs in on the advantages of drone-based warfare, among other things:

(With) UAVs being increasingly controlled by automated systems and operated from the comfort of a command center, the decision to release weapons can be made by an entire team, usually including a lawyer.  “The pilot is a mere voting member in the system that decides how to control the vehicle.” While the Air Force has held to the old model and employed officers with two years of special training as unmanned mission pilots, the Army has successfully run the same missions using enlisted personnel with ten weeks of training.  Soon, she predicts that the increasing automation will make it possible for each pilot to command multiple UAVs at a time.  The result will be that the pilots of the future will be more like video game players than the Chuck Yeager daredevils of the past.

Well, great. Fewer Chuck Yeagers and more lawyers.

That should keep things humming.

Part 1 of 4.

It’s all about body positioning.

But Bill Burk and [...]]]> I do not personally believe that a lawyer who had served as counsel for a Guantanamo detainee ought to be excluded from public office. After all John Adams defended Captain Thomas Preston, the officer in charge of the British patrol implicated in the Boston Massacre. It didn’t appear to hurt his career.

But Bill Burk and Dana Perino have a good point:

Congress is entirely within its rights to know who advises the attorney general on matters of national security — not so these people can be driven out of government or to shut them up, but so the public knows who is helping shape policy. What legitimate grounds could there be in a democracy to hide from the public the identities or responsibilities of political appointees? Because Keep America Safe might put up another ad? Please.

We wrote a piece yesterday about Supreme Court briefs Holder signed onto in 2004 and 2005 supporting Jose Padilla. Holder failed to disclose these briefs as he was required to during his confirmation hearings, and the Department of Justice has admitted this. As we discussed, the briefs provide a roadmap to many of Holder’s current policies, but one of them is also notable for admitting there might be trade-offs between protecting the individual rights of suspected terrorists and protecting national security, which Holder denies (as does the president) now that he’s atop the Justice Department.

We expect most people would agree that Holder’s policy views are very relevant to how he operates as a public official. So are those of the political appointees he chooses to surround himself with. We suspect many of them believe, as Holder did in his brief, that there is some level of risk we should be willing to bear to protect the rights of suspected terrorists. There’s no reason to think that this is anything other than an honestly held view. But how much risk they are willing to take is a legitimate topic for public debate.

I earnestly await the undoubtedly forthcoming exposé from the New York Times revealing the identity of those lawyers who represented al Qaeda detainees.

Because of the “peoples’ right to know,” and so forth.

Update: I’ll be damned.

During his confirmation last year, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. failed to notify the Senate that he had signed several briefs urging courts to reject President George W. Bush’s claim that he had the power to imprison an American citizen as an “enemy combatant,” the Justice Department acknowledged Thursday.

“The briefs should have been disclosed as part of the confirmation process,” said Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman…

“Are we expected to believe that then-nominee Holder, with only a handful of Supreme Court briefs to his name, forgot about his role in one of this country’s most publicized terrorism cases?” asked Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona.

And Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, said the opinions in the briefs “go to the heart of his responsibilities in matters of national security.”

“This is an extremely serious matter,” he said, “and the attorney general will have to address it.”

The comments opened a new chapter in a controversy over the Obama administration’s hiring of lawyers who had worked on detainee-related litigation.

In the New York Times, of all places.

Huh.