This evening's music features blues and funk guitarist Johnny "Guitar" Watson.

Here are some stories from tonight's post:

Pakistan court says former CIA station chief will face charges over drone strike

Islamabad high court orders murder charges be brought against Jonathan Banks and former CIA lawyer John A Rizzo for 2009 strike that killed at least three

The former head of the CIA in Pakistan should be tried for murder and waging war against the country, a high court judge ruled on Tuesday.

Criminal charges against Jonathan Banks, the former CIA station chief in Islamabad, were ordered in relation to a December 2009 attack by a US drone which reportedly killed at least three people.

Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad high court also ruled charges should be brought against John A Rizzo, formerly the top CIA lawyer who gave the legal green light for drone strikes.

Banks’s name was first dragged into the public domain in 2010 when a tribesman called Karim Khan began legal action against the supposedly undercover spy chief over an attack by an unmanned aircraft on his home in North Waziristan which he said killed his brother and son.

The extraordinary unmasking of a sitting station chief forced Banks to quit his post and leave the country. ...

With no chance of either of the two Americans travelling to Pakistan to face their day in court, the case is unlikely to go anywhere.

Diego Garcia: UK Delays Publication of Flight Records Which May Hold Truth About CIA Activities

The UK Foreign Office (FCO) has further delayed publication of flight records for Diego Garcia, following disclosures by a senior Bush administration official that interrogations took place at a CIA black site on the British island.

FCO officials are "still assessing the suitability of the full flight records for publication", nine months after they were first requested from the government by human rights NGO Reprieve.

Campaigners believe that the logs — written records of all flights landing on and leaving the atoll — could provide crucial, previously undisclosed details of flights involved in the intelligence agency's post-9/11 rendition and torture program.

God No, the U.S. Air Force Doesn’t Need Another Curtis LeMay

On March 27, the U.S. senate confirmed Air Force general Robin Rand as the next leader of Global Strike Command. He’s the first four-star general in GSC history to take on the role — and that’s just what the flying branch wants.

Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh said he appointed Rand because he hopes that a four star general in charge of America’s nuclear command will give the flyers greater influence over the country’s nuclear policy. ...

But what Welsh said next is troubling — and serves as a reminder why the Air Force doesn’t have a greater say in the nuclear debate.

“I told Robin Rand … go become the next Curtis LeMay,” Welsh said. “Bring this nuclear mission … back to the front edge of Air Force attention every single day.”

That’s a terrible idea. The last thing the Air Force — to say nothing of America as a whole — needs is another Curtis LeMay. He was a brilliant strategist who helped win World War II with overwhelming and brutal force. But he also pushed America close to nuclear war with the Soviet Union and crafted policies that led to almost all the military’s major nuclear disasters.

Without LeMay, America may have never pursued a Cold War strategy based on preemptive strikes and it may never have lost dozens of nukes.

DEA sued over secret bulk collection of Americans' phone records

Drug agency hoovered up billions of records of Americans calls without a warrant – which lawsuit says tested government’s surveillance powers to the limit

Human rights campaigners have prepared a federal lawsuit aiming to permanently shut down the bulk collection of billions of US phone records – not, this time, by the National Security Agency, but by the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Human Rights Watch, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, filed their lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court on Wednesday morning to stop the DEA from hoovering up billions of records of Americans’ international calls without a warrant.

The reach of the program, exposed by USA Today, lasted for two decades and served as a template for the NSA’s gigantic and ongoing bulk surveillance of US phone data after 9/11.

Though US officials insist the DEA is now out of the bulk-collection business, the revelation of mass phone-records collection in the so-called “war on drugs” raises new questions about whether the Obama administration or its successors believe US security agencies continue to have legal leeway for warrantless bulk surveillance on American citizens, even as officials forswear those powers publicly. ...

According to a USA Today, Republican and Democratic US presidents George Bush Sr, Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama permitted the DEA to monitor and store call data surrounding “virtually all telephone calls” from the US to 116 countries – most of the world – linked to drug trafficking. Its existence was first disclosed in January.

According to the paper, attorney general Eric Holder ended USTO in September 2013 out of fear of scandal following Snowden’s disclosures. ... Holder, who had first backed USTO as a Clinton administration deputy attorney general, shut it down in secret.

Emanuel Wins in Chicago, Garcia Fails to Ignite Black Vote

Once fiery black teachers union leader Karen Lewis pulled out for medical reasons, Garcia would not critique the Democratic Party and President Obama's neoliberal education policies as Lewis was willing to do

DIXON: I think that Chuy did about as well as any Democrat would have done, as any centrist Democrat would have done. Any Democrat, period, would have done. What Chuy didn't do, perhaps felt that he couldn't do, was he couldn't denounce the mayor's educational policies as part and parcel of the national bipartisan elite consensus on privatizing education in poor black and brown communities. Chuy couldn't do that because of course he, too, is a career Democrat.

Chuy couldn't denounce these things in the way that Karen Lewis might have been able to. Chuy couldn't advance a critique of the entire black political establishment, which almost unanimously -- almost -- came out for Rahm Emanuel. And these are things that Karen Lewis, an outsider, is more likely to have been able to do, had she chosen to. ...

JAY: Now, Garcia ran as if he was not part of the machine. He was supposed to be a man of the people. He was supposed to be like a working-class candidate. Why didn't that create more excitement amongst African-Americans? Because that's -- the African-Americans that did come out did more or less vote for the machine, which meant most people stayed home.

DIXON: Well, that, that being a Democrat but not being part of the machine was the story of maybe 20 or 25 years of my life and a lot of people's careers, and in fact it just doesn't work. There were some people who, revealingly, were portraying this on the national level as a fight for the soul of the Democratic party.

But in fact, the Democratic party has no soul, and if there ever was a fight for it it's a fight that was decided almost a generation ago. And as long as you're running as a Democrat, and the president, the biggest Democrat in the country is out here campaigning for your opponent, you better be something other than a Democrat in order to call that into question. If you're still a Democrat, and your president is coming in campaigning against you, that's got to say something.