Justice Department: Obama can kill Americans

[YoUDeeMan]

"A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” -- even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S."

http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/20 ... snhp&pos=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Obushma...wants to be a cowboy, baby.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glb2U6y-GdU[/youtube]

[kalm]

In particular, Jaffer said, the memo “redefines the word imminence in a way that deprives the word of its ordinary meaning.”

Fucking lawyers...

Wait till the mountains of western Montana suddenly become "infeasible."

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Oh that's right...we're at war...nevermind.

Looking forward to Greenwald's response to this.

[mrklean]

my balls itch

[kalm]

my balls itch

Yeah...due process is for the birds...and trial by jury?...screw the Magna Carta!

[death dealer]

Spandex better go underground quickly!!

[death dealer]

This gives the govt carte blanch to eliminate dissent. One step closer to the edge.

[Baldy]

This gives the govt carte blanch to eliminate dissent. One step closer to the edge.

Elections have consequences.

[death dealer]

This gives the govt carte blanch to eliminate dissent. One step closer to the edge.

Elections have consequences.

Welcome to the new normal, eh?

[Baldy]

Elections have consequences.

Welcome to the new normal, eh?

[D1B]

Welcome to the new normal, eh?

W killed tens of thousands of innocent people, including thousands of American soldiers.

[houndawg]

Suddenly the crowd that supports the Patriot Act, water boarding, Guantanamo, the torture memo, and two unnecessary wars is all worried about government tyranny?

I said a long time ago that you bitches would squeal a different tune once all these great ideas were turned against US citizens, and looky here.....

[houndawg]

"A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” -- even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S."

http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/20 ... snhp&pos=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Obushma...wants to be a cowboy, baby.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glb2U6y-GdU[/youtube]

The problem is that he is good at it, unlike his bumbling predecessor...

[YoUDeeMan]

my balls itch

Can't wait for the drones to start bombing all the viloent people in the ghettos...they are a threat to a peaceful America.

klean's shriveled balls will be howling about the unjustified killings of his undocumented children.

[Ibanez]

So..do we submit a list or what?

[Baldy]

Suddenly the crowd that supports the Patriot Act, water boarding, Guantanamo, the torture memo, and two unnecessary wars is all worried about government tyranny?

I said a long time ago that you bitches would squeal a different tune once all these great ideas were turned against US citizens, and looky here.....

Well then dawg, you should be on the front lines of the anti-gun control fight.

[YoUDeeMan]

"The undated memo is entitled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or An Associated Force.” It was provided to members of the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees in June by administration officials on the condition that it be kept confidential and not discussed publicly.

Although not an official legal memo, the white paper was represented by administration officials as a policy document that closely mirrors the arguments of classified memos on targeted killings by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which provides authoritative legal advice to the president and all executive branch agencies. The administration has refused to turn over to Congress or release those memos publicly -- or even publicly confirm their existence. A source with access to the white paper, which is not classified, provided a copy to NBC News."

Transparency. Change.

[death dealer]

Suddenly the crowd that supports the Patriot Act, water boarding, Guantanamo, the torture memo, and two unnecessary wars is all worried about government tyranny?

I said a long time ago that you bitches would squeal a different tune once all these great ideas were turned against US citizens, and looky here.....

Never supported any of the above. Never. Not even once. The only one I might get behind is Guantanamo, and even then I'm not sure the better answer wasn't a couple dozen 30 round clips quickly emptied. Foreign combatants are fair game. But this is a horse of a different color. This could easily be read to include citizens on native soil. And I heard a commentator on npr this morning clearly say that it removes the need for an immediate defined threat. So, the govt can now kill it's own citizens at home or abroad if it is perceived by those in power that doing so is justified by a possible future threat. Scary stuff.

[SDHornet]

As important as this development is; there is still nothing but finger pointing going on between Conks and Donks. Some people just don’t get it.

[GannonFan]

As important as this development is; there is still nothing but finger pointing going on between Conks and Donks. Some people just don’t get it.

Yup, I agree with this. The same people saying nothing or even supporting this now were the same ones who, when Bush did it, swore that the very fabric of America was being destroyed by a reckless cowboy. Just like many of those now criticizing this policy were nodding their heads in approval when Bush did things similar. Apparently for some there is no right and wrong, all of it depends on which political party is in control. For shame.

[kalm]

Suddenly the crowd that supports the Patriot Act, water boarding, Guantanamo, the torture memo, and two unnecessary wars is all worried about government tyranny?

I said a long time ago that you bitches would squeal a different tune once all these great ideas were turned against US citizens, and looky here.....

Never supported any of the above. Never. Not even once. The only one I might get behind is Guantanamo, and even then I'm not sure the better answer wasn't a couple dozen 30 round clips quickly emptied. Foreign combatants are fair game. But this is a horse of a different color. This could easily be read to include citizens on native soil. And I heard a commentator on npr this morning clearly say that it removes the need for an immediate defined threat. So, the govt can now kill it's own citizens at home or abroad if it is perceived by those in power that doing so is justified by a possible future threat. Scary stuff.

Yep.

And.....Greenwald goes off. It's a long read but a good one. Here's a couple of excerpts:

What has made these actions all the more radical is the absolute secrecy with which Obama has draped all of this. Not only is the entire process carried out solely within the Executive branch - with no checks or oversight of any kind - but there is zero transparency and zero accountability. The president's underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the president - at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as "Terror Tuesday" - then chooses from "baseball cards" and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark.

In fact, The Most Transparent Administration Ever™ has been so fixated on secrecy that they have refused even to disclose the legal memoranda prepared by Obama lawyers setting forth their legal rationale for why the president has this power. During the Bush years, when Bush refused to disclose the memoranda from his Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that legally authorized torture, rendition, warrantless eavesdropping and the like, leading Democratic lawyers such as Dawn Johnsen (Obama's first choice to lead the OLC) vehemently denounced this practice as a grave threat, warning that "the Bush Administration's excessive reliance on 'secret law' threatens the effective functioning of American democracy" and "the withholding from Congress and the public of legal interpretations by the [OLC] upsets the system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government."

But when it comes to Obama's assassination power, this is exactly what his administration has done. It has repeatedly refused to disclose the principal legal memoranda prepared by Obama OLC lawyers that justified his kill list. It is, right now, vigorously resisting lawsuits from the New York Times and the ACLU to obtain that OLC memorandum. In sum, Obama not only claims he has the power to order US citizens killed with no transparency, but that even the documents explaining the legal rationale for this power are to be concealed. He's maintaining secret law on the most extremist power he can assert.

The definition of an extreme authoritarian is one who is willing blindly to assume that government accusations are true without any evidence presented or opportunity to contest those accusations. This memo - and the entire theory justifying Obama's kill list - centrally relies on this authoritarian conflation of government accusations and valid proof of guilt.

They are not the same and never have been. Political leaders who decree guilt in secret and with no oversight inevitably succumb to error and/or abuse of power. Such unchecked accusatory decrees are inherently untrustworthy (indeed, Yemen experts have vehemently contested the claim that Awlaki himself was a senior al-Qaida leader posing an imminent threat to the US). That's why due process is guaranteed in the Constitution and why judicial review of government accusations has been a staple of western justice since the Magna Carta: because leaders can't be trusted to decree guilt and punish citizens without evidence and an adversarial process. That is the age-old basic right on which this memo, and the Obama presidency, is waging war.

Life-long Democratic Party lawyers are not going to oppose the terrorism policies of the president who appointed them. A president can always find underlings and political appointees to endorse whatever he wants to do. That's all this memo is: the by-product of obsequious lawyers telling their Party's leader that he is (of course) free to do exactly that which he wants to do, in exactly the same way that Bush got John Yoo to tell him that torture was not torture, and that even it if were, it was legal.

That's why courts, not the president's partisan lawyers, should be making these determinations. But when the ACLU tried to obtain a judicial determination as to whether Obama is actually authorized to assassinate US citizens, the Obama DOJ went to extreme lengths to block the court from ruling on that question. They didn't want independent judges to determine the law. They wanted their own lawyers to do so.

That's all this memo is: Obama-loyal appointees telling their leader that he has the authority to do what he wants. But in the warped world of US politics, this - secret memos from partisan lackeys - has replaced judicial review as the means to determine the legality of the president's conduct.

It is fitting indeed that the memo expressly embraces two core Bush/Cheney theories to justify this view of what "due process" requires. First, it cites the Bush DOJ's core view, as enunciated by John Yoo, that courts have no role to play in what the president does in the War on Terror because judicial review constitutes "judicial encroachment" on the "judgments by the President and his national security advisers as to when and how to use force". And then it cites the Bush DOJ's mostly successful arguments in the 2004 Hamdi case that the president has the authority even to imprison US citizens without trial provided that he accuses them of being a terrorist.

The reason this is so fitting is because, as I've detailed many times, it was these same early Bush/Cheney theories that made me want to begin writing about politics, all driven by my perception that the US government was becoming extremist and dangerous. During the early Bush years, the very idea that the US government asserted the power to imprison US citizens without charges and due process (or to eavesdrop on them) was so radical that, at the time, I could hardly believe they were being asserted out in the open.

Yet here we are almost a full decade later. And we have the current president asserting the power not merely to imprison or eavesdrop on US citizens without charges or trial, but to order them executed - and to do so in total secrecy, with no checks or oversight. If you believe the president has the power to order US citizens executed far from any battlefield with no charges or trial, then it's truly hard to conceive of any asserted power you would find objectionable.

This is fucked up.

[kalm]

As important as this development is; there is still nothing but finger pointing going on between Conks and Donks. Some people just don’t get it.

Yup, I agree with this. The same people saying nothing or even supporting this now were the same ones who, when Bush did it, swore that the very fabric of America was being destroyed by a reckless cowboy. Just like many of those now criticizing this policy were nodding their heads in approval when Bush did things similar. Apparently for some there is no right and wrong, all of it depends on which political party is in control. For shame.

Ahem...

[UNI88]

Yup, I agree with this. The same people saying nothing or even supporting this now were the same ones who, when Bush did it, swore that the very fabric of America was being destroyed by a reckless cowboy. Just like many of those now criticizing this policy were nodding their heads in approval when Bush did things similar. Apparently for some there is no right and wrong, all of it depends on which political party is in control. For shame.

Ahem...

Kalm, I wouldn't classify you as a kool-aid drinking Donk true believer. You're willing to call out either party when they fail to live up to their promises. You've been very critical of Obama not living up to the progressive image he likes to project.

[kalm]

Ahem...

Kalm, I wouldn't classify you as a kool-aid drinking Donk true believer. You're willing to call out either party when they fail to live up to their promises. You've been very critical of Obama not living up to the progressive image he likes to project.

Thanks, and I believe I'm increasingly not alone.

[Pwns]

The article says capture of the indivdual must be infeasible. I'd assume this would not include people on American soil.

[kalm]

The article says capture of the indivdual must be infeasible. I'd assume this would not include people on American soil.

No, It would be solely up to the administration to make that call...and they get to make it in secret.