IN: Al-Awlaki was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in 1971 to parents from Yemen, while his father, Nasser al-Awlaki, was doing graduate work at U.S. universities. His father was a Fulbright Scholar who earned a master's degree in agricultural economics at New Mexico State University in 1971, received a doctorate at the University of Nebraska, and worked at the University of Minnesota from 1975 to 1977. Nasser al-Awlaki served as Agriculture Minister in Ali Abdullah Saleh's government. He was also President of Sana'a University.

In July 2010, al-Awlaki's father, Nasser al-Awlaki, contacted the Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union to represent his son in a lawsuit that sought to remove Anwar from the targeted killing list. ACLU's Jameel Jaffer said: the United States is not at war in Yemen, and the government doesn't have a blank check to kill terrorism suspects wherever they are in the world. Among the arguments we'll be making is that, outside actual war zones, the authority to use lethal force is narrowly circumscribed, and preserving the rule of law depends on keeping this authority narrow. Lawyers for Specially Designated Global Terrorists must obtain a special license from the US Treasury Department before they can represent their clients in court. The lawyers were granted the license on August 4, 2010. On August 30, 2010, the groups filed a "targeted killing" lawsuit, naming President Obama, CIA Director Leon Panetta, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as defendants. They sought an injunction preventing the targeted killing of al-Awlaki, and also sought to require the government to disclose the standards under which US citizens may be "targeted for death". Judge John D. Bates dismissed the lawsuit in an 83-page ruling, holding that the father did not have legal standing to bring the lawsuit, and that his claims were judicially unreviewable under the political question doctrine inasmuch as he was questioning a decision that the US Constitution committed to the political branches. On May 5, 2011, the US tried but failed to kill al-Awlaki by firing a missile from an unmanned drone at a car in Yemen. A Yemeni security official said that two al-Qaeda operatives in the car died.
QUESTION: was there any public response to the lawsuit?
IN: Sam Benjamin Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American author, philosopher, neuroscientist, blogger, and podcast host. He is a critic of religion and proponent of the liberty to criticize religion. He is concerned with matters that touch on spirituality, morality, neuroscience, free will, and terrorism. He is described as one of the "Four Horsemen of atheism", with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett.

Harris was born on April 9, 1967 in Los Angeles, the son of actor Berkeley Harris and TV producer Susan Harris (nee Spivak), who created The Golden Girls. His father came from a Quaker background and his mother is a secular Jew. He was raised by his mother following his parents' divorce when he was aged two. Harris has stated that his upbringing was entirely secular, and his parents rarely discussed religion, though it was always a subject that interested him. Fellow critic of religion Christopher Hitchens once referred to Harris as a "Jewish warrior against theocracy and bigotry of all stripes". While a student at Stanford University, Harris experimented with MDMA, and has written and spoken about the insights he experienced under its influence. Though his original major was in English, he became interested in philosophical questions while at Stanford University after an experience with the psychedelic drug MDMA. The experience led him to be interested in the idea that he might be able to achieve spiritual insights without the use of drugs. Leaving Stanford in his second year, a quarter after his psychedelic experience, he went to India and Nepal, where he studied meditation with Buddhist and Hindu religious teachers, including Dilgo Khyentse. Eleven years later, in 1997, he returned to Stanford, completing a B.A. degree in philosophy in 2000. Harris began writing his first book, The End of Faith, immediately after the September 11 attacks. He received a Ph.D. degree in cognitive neuroscience in 2009 from the University of California, Los Angeles, using functional magnetic resonance imaging to conduct research into the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty. His thesis was titled "The moral landscape: How science could determine human values", and his advisor was Mark S. Cohen.
QUESTION: What was his parents like?
IN: Good Night, and Good Luck is a 2005 American historical drama film directed by George Clooney and starring David Strathairn, George Clooney, Robert Downey, Jr., Patricia Clarkson and Jeff Daniels. The movie was written by Clooney and Grant Heslov (both of whom also have acting roles in the film) and portrays the conflict between veteran radio and television journalist Edward R. Murrow and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, especially relating to the anti-Communist Senator's actions with the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Although released in black and white, Good Night, and Good Luck was filmed on color film stock but on a greyscale set, and was color corrected to black and white during post-production. It focuses on the theme of media responsibility, and also addresses what occurs when the media offer a voice of dissent from government policy.

In September 2005, Clooney explained his interest in the story to an audience at the New York Film Festival: "I thought it was a good time to raise the idea of using fear to stifle political debate." Having majored in journalism in college, Clooney was well-versed in the subject matter. His father, Nick Clooney, was a television journalist for many years, appearing as an anchorman in Cincinnati, Ohio, Salt Lake City, Utah, Los Angeles, California, and Buffalo, New York. The elder Clooney also ran for Congress in 2004. George Clooney was paid $1 each for writing, directing, and acting in Good Night, and Good Luck., which cost $7.5 million to make. Due to an injury he received on the set of Syriana a few months earlier, Clooney could not pass the tests to be insured. He then mortgaged his own house in Los Angeles in order to make the film. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and former eBay president Jeff Skoll invested money in the project as executive producers. The film ultimately grossed more than $54 million worldwide. The CBS offices and studios seen in the movie were all sets on a soundstage. To accomplish a pair of scenes showing characters going up an elevator, different "floors" of the building were laid out on the same level. The "elevator" was actually built on a large turntable at the intersection of the two floor sets, and rotated once the doors were closed. When the doors reopened, the actors appeared to be in a different location. In doing so, the movie exercised a bit of dramatic license--the CBS executive offices at the time were located at 485 Madison Avenue. CBS News was located in an office building just north of Grand Central Terminal (demolished and now the site of the Met Life Building); and the See It Now studio was located in Grand Central Terminal itself, above the waiting room. For dramatic effect, all three areas were depicted as being in the same building. Clooney and producer Grant Heslov decided to use only archival footage of Joseph McCarthy in his depiction. As all of that footage was black-and-white, that determined the color scheme of the film. A young Robert Kennedy is also shown in the movie during McCarthy's hearing sessions. He was then a staff member on the Senate subcommittee chaired by McCarthy.
QUESTION:
Was the production successful?