Hey! That’s not bin Laden! That’s a video-age journalist trying to cut through the haze of sound bites and atomized consciousness.

Jeremy Scahill reports Blackwater/XE Ordered US Forces to Kill People Blackwater Suspected of Possessing Cannabis in an Air Strike. The US Complied, in an Apparent War Crime Atrocity. Harvard Business School Helped Pay For It & Cover It Up.

Jeremy Scahill and Democracy Now!, in today’s exclusive broadcast of secretly recorded audio, expose the malicious political myth-making of Erik Prince.

In an editorial in Tuesday’s Washington Post, Fred Hiatt joins in on Harold Koh’s attempted whitewashing of drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It’s too bad he’s helping to spread lies.

Republicans in the Senate are throwing a hissy fit over health reform, using all kinds of obscure rules to block any business from getting done. Their latest tactic is to force adjournment of all Senate committee hearings after 2 pm, using a little known Senate rule. (Don’t you just love those!)

What does this mean? It’s unlikely Blackwater will get the contract $1 billion to train forces in Afghanistan in the coming weeks, as was expected. But this doesn’t mean Blackwater won’t get the contract eventually – it just delays the process through another round of bids. The Army will design a new contract and solicit new bids, though the administration through the Departments of Defense and State could design the contract themselves if they chose. Blackwater could then bid for the new contract, along with others, and conceivably win.

Blackwater is expected to receive a $1 billion contract in the next few weeks to provide “police training and logistics” in Afghanistan. I personally believe there may be ways to stop Blackwater from getting this contract, and hopefully will have more information to follow up with soon. But even if Blackwater were refused this new contract due to past offenses such as murder or fraud, it won’t solve the underlying issue: Mercenaries should not be performing the functions of our military.

On the last day of 2009, federal district court judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed homicide charges against five former Blackwater security guards involved in a shooting that killed fourteen Iraqi civilians in 2007. Judge Urbina’s decision cites egregious prosecutorial misconduct by the federal prosecutors handling the case as the reason for the dismissal. The dismissal comes at the end of a year that saw at least a dozen cases of federal prosecutorial misconduct, including the well known Ted Stevens fiasco. These cases and others reinforce an emerging consensus that we must do more to ensure that our prosecutors live up to the standards of professionalism and fairness on which our system depends.

Join Congresswoman Schakowsky and Senator Sanders as they introduce legislation to roll back the use of unaccountable and controversial mercenaries, sign on as a citizen co-signer to the Stop Outsourcing Our Security Act.

A look at the use of night raids in Afghanistan. Anand Gopal’s recent article “Afraid of the Dark” is used to enhance the exploration of night raids in Afghanistan and the “war on terror”