This story began last year, when the White House told the New York Times that President Obama was personally overseeing a "kill list" and an ongoing drone bombing campaign against alleged terrorists, including American citizens. Back then, much of the public language was carefully crafted to reassure us that our country's military power was not being abused.

In the Times' report - which was carefully sculpted by Obama administration leaks - the paper characterized the bombing program as "targeted killing" with "precision weapons." It additionally described "the care that Mr. Obama and his counterterrorism chief take in choosing targets" and claimed that as "a student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, the president believes that he should take moral responsibility" for making sure such strikes are as precise as possible.

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According to a survey by Westlaw, the most common legislation being considered by states would require warrants before police can use drones -- though North Carolina, Utah and Virginia “called for the investigation of, or express concern for, the authorized use of drones against U.S. citizens by the U.S. government."

The Wall Street Journal reports on more of the findings:

Across the nation:

* 20 states have proposed or established privacy rights of action for those aggrieved by violations of drone rules;

* 17 have laws or bills banning “weaponized” drones;

* 17 have proposed or carved out emergency exceptions for drone use; and

* 16 have introduced or enacted laws making it a crime to violate drone statutes.

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There are numerous ways of understanding this disheartening turn of events. Maybe the secret note that George W. Bush left in the top drawer of the Resolute desk on Jan. 20, 2009, contained a “Manchurian Candidate”-style code word that switched on the programming! Or maybe, somewhat more plausibly, the entire secret apparatus of American counterterrorism at home and abroad has become an independent and self-replicating organism, a Hydra-headed monster that can’t be killed. The president himself indirectly took that tack on Friday, when he tackled questions about the surveillance revelations for the first time, during a supposedly unrelated press conference.

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As Richard Engel and Robert Windrem reported, having reviewed months of classified documents:

About one of every four of those killed by drones in Pakistan between Sept. 3, 2010, and Oct. 30, 2011, were classified as "other militants,” the documents detail. The “other militants” label was used when the CIA could not determine the affiliation of those killed, prompting questions about how the agency could conclude they were a threat to U.S. national security.

The findings cement concerns that the U.S. is using dangerously broad determinations in picking strike targets, relying often merely "signature" behaviors and movements. The NBC report is further evidence disproving government claims that drone strikes precisely and specifically target al-Qaida top operatives -- a notion long contested by investigative reporters, legal experts and human rights groups.

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While police are permitted to use drones (with certain restrictions), the Texas bill specifically prohibits citizen drone use to capture images of corporate malfeasance. The legislation was prompted by an incident last year when a hobbyist operating a small drone over public land in Dallas accidentally photographed a meat-packing plant illegally dumping pig blood into the Trinity River, resulting in an EPA indictment.

Privacy advocates have praised the bill's measures that limit both corporate and law enforcement use of drones to surveil the public without limit. However, as mentioned here before, such legislation prefigures the shape of drone proliferation in the use: This is not technology that will be easily democratized. PopSci explained the details of the Texas bill, which is set to be signed into law:

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As a liberal, I’m against drones essentially by reflex. At least, I used to be. Recently, I’ve begun to reconsider that view; and I’m no longer sure where I come down on the morality of drone strikes. Disturbing as I find state-sponsored violence, when drones do the killing instead of soldiers, it seems apparent that we have an easier time recognizing the violence as horrific. War, in its traditional form, distorts our moral reasoning. Drones do not. And as much it grates against my broader political commitments to say so, this is plainly a benefit of drone warfare, other shortcomings notwithstanding.

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In a speech at the National Defense University, Obama tried to redefine that fight and at least rhetorically end the war. “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that ‘No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’”

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On Wednesday afternoon, in a letter to Congress, Attorney General Eric Holder for the first time formally acknowledged that U.S. drones had killed four U.S. citizens -- including Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son. Bearing out long-held concerns in the human rights community over the description of these strikes as "targeted" killings, only one of these U.S. citizens (al-Awlaki senior) was on the government's kill list.

The New York Times' typically administration-friendly report suggests that Obama's speech will hail the dawn of a new age of high precision, unproblematic drone strikes. The language used in Holder's letter, however, alongside recent disturbing comments from top Pentagon officials, give us reason to doubt that the boundless, limitless War on Terror is coming to any sort of clean end.

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According to an administration official, Politico reports, Obama will discuss the policy at the National Defense University in Washington. From Politico:

Obama plans elaborate on "the state of the threats we face, particularly as Al Qaeda core has weakened but new dangers have emerged," the official said. He will also "discuss the policy and legal framework under which we take action against terrorist threats, including the use of drones" and "will review our detention policy and efforts to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay."

The president will also "frame the future of our efforts against Al Qaeda, its affiliates and adherents."

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Sheehan's remarks served as a defense of the military's current drone strike policy. While the majority of U.S. drone strikes are carried out by the CIA and authorized by the president directly, the Pentagon oversees strikes in Pakistan and will take increasing control of U.S. drone programs. Sheehan also defended the current structure of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Act (AUMF), passed after 9/11, which, in its present iteration, grants the president wide-ranging powers to wage drone wars. “At this point we’re comfortable with the AUMF as it is currently structured,” said Sheehan. He admitted that there was no expiration date or geographic boundary to the War on Terror.

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As Ryan Devereaux reported for the Guardian, in the third quarter of 2009 alone "Dang made a total of six arrests out of his 127 stops. He wrote one summons. He found contraband once. He never recovered any weapons and he only stopped people of color, primarily African Americans, 115 times to be exact. He never stopped a white person." Dang's record here is stunning enough alone. More telling still is the justifications he recounted to the court for making many of his stops, referring to repeated observation of individuals' general behavioral patterns, including "furtive movements" -- a vague policing phrase regularly stretched beyond the limits of all reasonableness. "We have a general idea of their behavior," Dang testified.

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The ruling bolsters recent claims made by U.N. human rights expert Ben Emmerson Q.C., following a visit to Pakistan, that authorities in the country gave no consent, tacit or otherwise, for the CIA strikes to be carried out in its tribal regions. However, reporting by Mark Mazzetti suggests that a secret deal, forged between the CIA and the Pakistani military, gave the go-ahead for U.S. drone strikes in return for the initial targeting of an enemy of the Pakistani state (not an al-Qaida operative).

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These kind of stories will continue for one big, if unstated, reason: robotic warfare seems to hold the promise of making many things easier, cheaper and less risky, at least for the countries that operate the drones. But the operative word is "seems," for drones involve a problematic illusion that distorts our perception of the risks we face.

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Wednesday's ad hoc drone hearing, called by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is a dim flicker of light shed against dense shadows surrounding the Obama administration's lethal drone strike program. While lawmakers including Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have made dubious claims about the precision of drone strikes and limited civilian casualties, and while CIA Director John Brennan has vowed that reports of civilian death are seriously investigated, rarely is testimony from those who've seen the first hand plight of drone struck regions heard on Capitol Hill. Written and video testimony was released to Salon in advance of the hearing.

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In the exclusive conversation below, Al-Muslimi tells Salon about the drone strikes’ devastating toll on Yemeni civilians and how the current U.S. counterterrorism policy in Yemen is like “reading from a manual '10 Steps on How to Lose a War.'”

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In 2008, the hysterical backlash to the above comment by Barack Obama's minister became a high-profile example of one of the most insidious rules in American politics: You are not allowed to honestly discuss the Central Intelligence Agency's concept of "blowback" without putting yourself at risk of being deemed a traitor to country.

Now, five years later, with America having killed thousands of Muslim civilians in its drone strikes and wars, that rule is thankfully being challenged, and not by someone who is so easily smeared. Instead, the apostate is one of this epoch's most revered journalists, and because of that, we will see whether this country is mature enough to face one of its biggest national security quandaries.

This is the news from Tom Brokaw's appearance on “Meet the Press” last Sunday. Discussing revelations that the bombing suspects may be connected to Muslim fundamentalism, he said:

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“I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important,” Paul declared. “That your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”

Even though I disagree with Paul on virtually every other issue and generally consider him to be kind of a joke, I’d have been happy to be proven wrong. Maybe he had a conscience. Maybe he would become a much needed civil liberties leader on the right.

Alas, I haven’t been proven wrong. Mr. Filibuster, the tribune of civil liberties, now says that drones should have been used against the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston – not only that, he told Fox’s Neal Cavuto they should even be used against someone robbing a liquor store.

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Whether the Senate hearing will yield answers to crucial questions about Obama's drone wars is unclear. Witnesses scheduled to testify include retired Gen. James Cartwright of United States Marine Corp; activist and journalist Farea Al-Muslimi of Sana’a, Yemen; Peter Bergen, director of the National Security Studies Program at the New America Foundation; and a number of legal experts. Although the Senate committee tried to have a witness appear from the Justice Department, this request was denied.

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