Congress, Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Politics, Society

Holder Tells Senator That Obama Does Have Authority To Kill Citizens With Drones On U.S. Soil Without Criminal Charge or Conviction

300px-MQ-9_Reaper_-_090609-F-0000M-777President_Barack_ObamaAttorney General Eric Holder this week held out the possibility that the President could kill an American citizens with a drone attack on U.S. soil without any criminal charge or trial. After Holder announced President Obama’s kill list policy, many apologists for the Administration insisted that the policy was limited to targets outside of the United States and was subject to a form of due process of the President’s own making. At the time, I wrote that these arguments were nothing but spin by the Administration and its supporters since the underlying claim of authority would have no such limitations. Holder now appears to have confirmed that even they do not believe in such limitations. This follows the release of a memo showing that Holder’s description of the policy at Northwestern University Law School was narrower than the actual policy described within the Administration.

Holder was responding to a letter from Sen. Rand Paul concerning the nomination of CIA director John Brennan on the use of lethal force. Holder said “It is possible I suppose to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States.”

It will be difficult for people to find someway, as in the past, to blame this policy on Republicans. The kill list policy of Obama belongs to him. As I discussed in earlier columns (here and here and here), it is astonishing how citizens, including so many liberals and civil libertarians, have remained relatively silent in the face of a classic claim of authoritarian power. The relative silence over this latest development shows just how passive the country, and particularly liberals, have become in challenging Obama on his aggregation of executive power. It also is the latest evidence showing Obama’s evisceration of the civil liberties movement in this country. There is little observable movement left after it was divided over loyalty to Obama in the first term. A president has previously said that he can kill U.S. citizens on his own authority. It was then revealed that the citizen does not actually have to be involved in an imminent terrorism attack. Now he claims the right to use that authority in the U.S. The response at every stage has been a collective and prolonged yawn from a people growing comfortable with a burgeoning security state and an imperial president.

Source: CNN

183 thoughts on “Holder Tells Senator That Obama Does Have Authority To Kill Citizens With Drones On U.S. Soil Without Criminal Charge or Conviction”

  1. I wouldnt say Sam Adams was a thug who thought any means justifies the ends. But then if you believe in the end, doesnt that justify the means?

    “I. Natural Rights of the Colonists as Men.

    Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
    All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.

    When men enter into society, it is by voluntary consent; and they have a right to demand and insist upon the performance of such conditions and previous limitations as form an equitable original compact.

    Every natural right not expressly given up, or, from the nature of a social compact, necessarily ceded, remains.

    All positive and civil laws should conform, as far as possible, to the law of natural reason and equity.

    As neither reason requires nor religion permits the contrary, every man living in or out of a state of civil society has a right peaceably and quietly to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience.”

    Samuel Adams,
    The Rights of the Colonists
    The Report of the Committee of Correspondence
    to the Boston Town Meeting, Nov. 20, 1772

    http://history.hanover.edu/texts/adamss.html

    Seems to me Mr. Jefferson may have borrowed some concepts from ole Sam. Who, apparently, has read the classics himself.

    Which is a lot more than we can say for many citizens in today’s world and more is the pity. If they [classics] had been taught in public schools we would not have been subjected to Bush or Obama or many other presidents for that matter.

  2. Many sophisticated right-wingers hated Hugo Chavez and other progressive leaders in South America, because they know that in Venezuela, the people there will not go backwards. They will vote to continue the progress that has been made over the past 14 years — and that IF, BIG if, a progressive president gets elected here and isn’t removed from office before actual liberal policies are enacted, it will be very, very hard to to get away with removing him/her legally, and equally hard to do so without being found out, if they attempt to do so via a Coup de’Tat or violence a la JFK.

    As in Venezuela, the public will be loath to reject progress.

  4. This is just a logical extension of Holder’s speech at NorthWestern University from last year which Turley was prescient enough to withhold his vote for Obama’s 2nd term.

  6. lotta,

    It’s all propaganda … miscasting the Foundings without real knowledge of their actions, inactions etc. The whole Tea Party thing for instance.

    Two rival gangs in Boston got together and instead of fighting each other in criminal enterprises (much like gang activity today) were convinced by the Loyal Nine to form an alliance and go after the Tories. Lots of booty to be had, lots of drinking to be done, lots of violence to indulge. Sam Adams, recognizing the use to which these ruffians could be put, advised the Loyal Nine on directions to be take and the alliance morphed into the Sons of Liberty. So yeah, a lot of tea was dumped into the harbor but an undisclosed amount was also liberated and sold on the black market.

    Sam was one of those “any means justifies the ends” guys which is why his contributions, which were many and hugely important, were pretty much swept under the rug after the war was won whereas Jefferson, the elite plantation snob who never dirtied his hands with actual violence (unless it was whipping or raping a slave), who could recognize a good french wine and quote quite a few Classics, got the nod for lionization. Jefferson deserves lionization in his own right but let’s be honest about it … he was the guy who retreated to the wings until all the dirty work had been done. Sam did the dirty work.

    Some poster trying to propagandize a blog with the screen name Sam Adams quoting Jefferson is just funny.

  8. Gene, When the resignation was announce I said, first thing out of my mouth, “The fix is in” to the horror of the couple of people I was with. They just could not grasp that Nixon would not go to jail or be impeached post-facto. I have always been kind of sad and puzzled about that- not that they were so ‘faith-full’ but that I was so (correctly) cynical so young. Did growing up in the 60’s mark us in some way, change our world view in a way that over time dampened our sense of outrage with cynicism. I think there’s a lot more play for the bad guys in a population that has low expectations.

  9. Raf, Congress is the problem, I don’t look for them to even do their collective job let alone put the country back on the right track. The majority in the House has and is actively working to destroy the economy. 2014 is going to be interesting in the states as well as Washington.

  11. LK,

    I don’t disagree with what you’ve said in the most part, but please re-read the conditional on the “I told you so”. It was narrowly tailored to those who were critical of my decision not to support Obama again based on the kill list issue, not to the general audience. This blog’s audience on the whole tends to be paying more attention than most of the public. Their prescience on the specifics of unitary Executive abuses is pretty much a given. As for your 2001 comment? There is a lot of truth in that and this most politicized and impartial of all SCOTUS shoulders a lot of the blame. However, I think the taproot is in the decision not to prosecute Nixon. Once one man was allowed to be expressly and obviously above the law, it has been pretty much down hill in re malfeasance of office and criminal actions by government officials.

  12. Thanks Gene. That is why I don’t get excited when a Senator or Congressperson takes exception to the executive powers that they helped enlarge. Show me some action and rescind the AUMF.

  13. Gene, If you did not anticipate today’s headline some good long time ago then you have been behind the curve and I don’t think that’s the case. I doubt that many regular posters to this blawg were shocked. I certainly am not. The problem with secret laws and secret legal opinions is that anything could be there and as they dribble out into the light one is more egregious that the last. We know that from the torture memos and opinions. We know that from the scope of NSA surveillance which was a big deal for awhile when that was moved from a secret to public knowledge.

    I don’t even put the path to a president assuming dictatorial powers on flimsy grounds to this one. The President never captured a power that Congress didn’t abdicate. Congress abdicated it’s most powerful duty and responsibility to the Executive with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in the early 60’s. When “war” was brought home and codified under the banner of homeland security by Congress (which broke the back of the Bill of Rights) really, what did people expect?

    This administration has been ruthless in prosecuting whistle-blowers, that causes me to wonder what else is back there (and just how awful is it) that this administration guards their secrets so jealously? I would not be shocked to have a data dump by Anonymous that shows Americans have been snatched off American streets and renditioned, to black sites within the country if not overseas.

    At some point the assessment becomes ‘just how crazy/evil is candidate A verses candidate B; which is the more immanent threat and in what relevant arena’?

    LOL, the predictability of this president, or any current president exercising powers heretofore reserved to despots and monarchs is not a stretch. “I told you so” is laying it on kinda thick for the regular audience. Some of us are well aware that this and the last president should have been impeached, if Bush had been impeached maybe we wouldn’t be having this conversation. In fact IMO the coup took place in 2001, if the SCOTUS had been impeached and their decision revisited (is such a thing possible?) we wouldn’t be having this conversation either. I guess I’ll just have to wait for the alternate-reality Sci-Fi book to be written, paging Harry Turtledove…..

  14. Copy that, raff. A lot of Paul’s talk has been about the overreach by the Executive under the AUMF. As you say, the fix is simple: revoke the AUMF. But alas, I’m with you on the breathing issue too.

  15. I have a suggestion for Congress, including Mr. Paul. Terminate the AUMF for one and then scale back the so-called Patriot Act and much of this nonsense about Presidents being able to ignore due process and the 4th amendment will go away. Does Congress have the stones to do that? I would love to see it, but I am not holding my breath.

  17. Some liberals (sic) seem to believe that evil Bronco Bama is preferable to another evil replacement. Impeachment isn’t limited to only one philanderig
    right-winger (Clintoon) per generation.

  20. Gene:
    I have been out most of the afternoon, and am about to leave again. I got an email about Rand Paul filibustering. My correspondent is like me, in that there is almost nothing I agree with Paul the Lesser about, but my email said he had been talking about tying the Second and Fourth Amendments together. My friend was telling me he was asking how the Second could be protected if the Fourth was shredded.

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