A bill was brokered Wednesday by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy [regarding the crime scene] photos from the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. But civil libertarians oppose the legislation and Connecticut's newspaper and radio executives warned Wednesday that suppression of information could set a bad precedent and create unintended consequences. The bill, a draft of which was released by the governor's office late Wednesday afternoon, is crafted specifically to cover the crime-scene photos and 911 audio recordings of the December 14 shootings at the Newtown school. But it would also allow Town Clerk Debbie Aurelia to continue to withhold the death certificates for the 20 first graders and six adults murdered there...

An Israeli military commander says Tel Aviv is prepared to carry out an attack on Syria if the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad collapses. - On Wednesday, Israeli Major General Amir Eshel said the Tel Aviv regime might launch a sudden war on Syria should Damascus fall. “We have to be ready for any scenario, at a few hours’ notice,” Eshel stated. He also said that the Israeli regime would even prepare for a “protracted” war with a “post-Assad Syria.” The recent Israeli threat is seen as part of the Western-backed efforts to set up the scene for a military intervention in Syria. The Tel Aviv regime has already carried out three air strikes on Syria.

Bill Van Auken: Behind Syria peace talks proposal, US prepares regional war

United States Attorney General Eric Holder has informed Congress that four American citizens have been killed in Yemen and Pakistan by US drones since 2009. - It has been widely reported but rarely acknowledged in Washington that three US citizens — Samir Khan, Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenage son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki — were executed in Yemen by missile-equipped drones in 2011. With Holder’s latest admission, however, a fourth American — Jude Kenan Mohammed — has also been officially named as another casualty in America’s continuing drone war.

John Glaser: Obama Admits US Killed 4 Americans in Drone War

Twenty-seven-year-old Ibragim Todashev was shot and killed early Wednesday morning while being interrogated by police and intelligence officials in an Orlando, Florida, apartment. Todashev, a friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and, like Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen, was reportedly being questioned by a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent from the FBI’s Boston field office, along with Massachusetts state troopers and counterterrorism officials. The FBI claims that Todashev had implicated both himself and Tsarnaev in the grisly murder of three men in Waltham, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb, on September 11, 2011. They said he then suddenly pulled a knife and tried to attack the FBI agent questioning him. The attack, according to the FBI, prompted the lethal shooting.

Xymphora: 'Solving' crimes, post 9/11 - [Gawker: ironic_username:] So the FBI shows up to perform a prolonged interrogation of this guy, ends up shooting and killing him, and then lets everyone know that it's okay because he was part of a triple homicide in 2011. It's pretty convenient that they don't even need to have any sort of trial or anything at this point, because both of the suspects are dead. If all law enforcement has to do to convict people of crimes is anonymously leak incriminating details to a compliant media without fear of rebuttal or reprisal, then do we really need to keep offering suspects trials by jury? - After the FBI killed the guy they were interrogating, they immediately had to work backwards to solve the previously unsolvable crime, with the bonus that everybody will now forget that they eliminated a witness under very suspicious circumstances. Presumably we are to believe that the dead guy confessed, implicated the two brothers, and then for some bizarre reason decided to take on the FBI armed with a knife he somehow procured. Added: they are backing off on the knife story. Even Josh Marshall is finding this story hard to digest.

Julian Assange and a coalition of activists and journalists filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the military judge overseeing Army Pfc. Bradley Manning’s trial in a bid to open access to the secretive proceedings. - During the trial both access to transcripts and prosecution and defense motions have been virtually inaccessible. Bradley, who faces a life sentence over the leaking of more than 700,000 sensitive military documents published by Wikileaks, is currently being tried by a military tribunal. The trial is expected to begin on June 3, 2013. The judge overseeing Manning’s court-martial announced this week that she will close portions of the trial to the public in order to protect classified material. Prosecutors are expected to call 150 witnesses to testify against Manning, while two dozen witnesses may be able to provide their testimony in closed sessions.