Indefinite Detention? But I Have Soccer Practice at 4: U.S. Politics 2012

is anyone thinking that he DID have someone else to blame, or that he WAS blaming someone else?

so, what can you tell me about angus king

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/05/democrats_suddenly_have_a_maine_headache/singleton/

Holder gave his speech this afternoon regarding targeting killing of Americans. Probably not enough detail to satisfy ACLU who want the authorizing memo

that authorization memo is gonna have to come out in open court at some point

OH NOES Rush dropped from his station in Hawaii!

mahalo

Among those condemning Limbaugh on Monday was radio host Don Imus, who lost his radio and TV jobs in 2007 for making insulting remarks about a women’s college basketball team. Said Imus on his morning program: “He owns a Gulfstream 4. Get on it, go to Washington, take her to lunch and say, ‘Look, I’m sorry I said this stuff,’ and never do it again, period. Now, he’s an insincere pig, pill-popping pinhead.”

lol smell blood in the water do ya Don

does rush really own a gulfstream 4??

he owns a 550. "with a color blended specifically for Mr. Limbaugh called Rush Gold"

http://www.werushdaily.com/page/eib-one-in-pictures

He was dropped by a station in Massachusetts as well btw.

so, what can you tell me about angus king

as long as Republican doesn't win the seat - and bring with them all the party allegiances that entails - I don't think there's much to worry about. The vote-splitting thing between King and a Dem nominee would obviously be bad news.

thanks for the update on maine politics shakey mo

lol

yr welcome

that authorization memo is gonna have to come out in open court at some point

― be scientific, douchebag (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, March 5, 2012

You think the ACLU can win on this? I can see courts letting them keep it/them secret. Today, the Washington Post is calling for the White House to release them

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-time-to-release-the-drone-memos/2012/03/05/gIQA7jVXtR_story.html

Greenwald weighs in, of course on Holder's speech, in a lengthy piece. http://www.salon.com/2012/03/06/attorney_general_holder_defends_execution_without_charges/singleton/

Charles Pierce, writing about Holder’s speech, described this best: “a monumental pile of crap that should embarrass every Democrat who ever said an unkind word about John Yoo.”

haha. A classic Greenwald-going-ham post.

You think the ACLU can win on this? I can see courts letting them keep it/them secret.

yeah I think eventually the ACLU will win. it may take a long time (ie decades) tho

there's an imperialist logic to this thing that hasn't been remarked upon much recently, to my knowledge. the phrase 'the world is a battlefield,' said either in favor or against these assassinations and their justification--everybody knows that's not really the whole world. there are not going to be hellfire attacks on islamists in, say, france or thailand or eastern europe or south america. the whole thing rests on there being countries whose own legal and physical powers are so weak that the raw assertion of american power can be seen entirely as an "american" constitutional problem.

consider the sentence "american citizen killed by CIA in yemen;" it's the "american citizen" part that's getting so much attention, but i wonder if "in yemen" isn't really the justification. "come on, the guy went to yemen, he's off the map, what difference does it make?" if you joined al-qaeda but stayed within the geography of the connected world (stayed out of SW asia or the horn of africa basically) you aren't going to have a missile dropped on you. snatched off the street with local cooperation, sure.

i'm tired as fucc so maybe this doesn't make any sense.

press: romney has called you america's most feckless prez since carter. is there anything you'd like to say to him?
b.o.: *pause* "good luck tonight"
*laughter*

ballertime.jpg

ron wyden on holder:

http://wyden.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/?id=eaf00c44-d49b-4984-a211-fdb375460a1d

For example, the government should explain exactly how much evidence the President needs in order to decide that a particular American is part of a terrorist group. It is also unclear to me whether individual Americans must be given the opportunity to surrender before lethal force is used against them. And I’m particularly concerned that the geographic boundaries of this authority have not been clearly laid out. Based on what I’ve heard so far, I can’t tell whether or not the Justice Department’s legal arguments would allow the President to order intelligence agencies to kill an American inside the United States.

gets at the geographical element i was trying to think about

only if citizen was someplace completely inaccessible, like wyoming.

of course we are never going to get a list of places where the US gov't will say they will consider killing someone and where they won't. but everybody basically knows, right??

it comes down to "can we feasibly arrest this person or not", if it's no, we can kill them. rules are made up afterward at the govt's convenience

i'm more confused by what holder means by "judicial process" as opposed to "due process" - pretty sure he completely made this part up

“Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces,” Mr. Holder said. “This is simply not accurate. ‘Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/us/politics/holder-explains-threat-that-would-call-for-killing-without-trial.html

due process could also involve administrative procedures that aren't necessarily judicial review, but he's also giving no justification for removing judicial review from a governmental action (execution) that usually requires one.

it comes down to "can we feasibly arrest this person or not",

I do not think they ever wanted to arrest Anwar al-Awlaki.

then that's little more than a rhetorical trick on holder's part. as far as i know, "due process" has been interpreted by the judiciary to mean things covered by the fifth and sixth amendments

The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.

It's high time that the Congress acted to clarify the post-9/11 law that the Bush and Obama administrations have cited to justify this shit. Because, if you take the courts out of the equation all together, all the law says is that whoever is running the executive branch atm can use all the force they think is necessary to eliminate terrorist threats to the USA, which of course becomes an unlimited power to kill anyone with no check or balance, and it's what leads to shit like this.

Yoo-hoo! Congress! How about a little action over here?

agreed. it's a bullshit excuse and holder ought to be ashamed for providing it as obama ought to be ashamed for accepting it as good enough.

haha congress.

i don't think the congress itself wants the american public to be more aware of the powers congress exercises -- it would mean americans would start to ask congress to do stuff differently

agreed. it's a bullshit excuse and holder ought to be ashamed for providing it as obama ought to be ashamed for accepting it as good enough.

― wmlynch, Tuesday, March 6, 2012 2:31 PM (3 minutes ago)

another liberal icon, harold koh, is just as complicit

Kevin Drum's suggestion:

If you want to kill a U.S. citizen outside of a traditional hot battlefield, there needs to be independent oversight. The FISA court performs this function for surveillance, and we know from experience that it rarely gets in the government's way. But at least it's technically independent and forces the executive branch to follow its own rules. It's the absolute minimum that we should require for targeted killings too.

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/03/holder-oversight-good-idea-if-youre-killing-us-citizens-doesnt-mean-were-going-allow-a

ha i can already see the ioz post about that kind of reasoning

"let's get some other arm of the state to check the right box before killing someone, the president checking the box himself is just too unseemly"

Yoo-hoo! Congress! How about a little action over here?

congress even more aggro about killing US citizens/denying due process than the executive, unfortunately

Yes. It plays well on the 6 p.m. news.

No questions to Obama at the press conference about killing Amuricans

More change we can believe in:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/44/post/biden-hires-president-of-a-lobbying-firm/2012/03/05/gIQAFCMGtR_blog.html

Meanwhile, this happened:
http://obamasmyguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/omg-oval-sticker.png

Okay roffle:

Despite the public outrage, SeekingArrangement.com, the world’s largest sugar daddy and sugar baby dating website announced today its decision to begin advertising on the Rush Limbaugh show for the first time. The moniker of a Sugar Daddy is that of an older, successful wealthy man romantically involved with a younger, beautiful woman, much like the relationship Rush shares with his much younger wife, Lauryn Rogers.

“Rush Limbaugh is one of the greatest examples of the modern day Sugar Daddy,” says Brandon Wade, the Founder & CEO of SeekingArrangement.com. “We wouldn’t feel right if we didn’t come forward and support him in his time of need.”

hahahahahahahahaha

"I'm sorry I called her a slut. Time for a commercial break about whores."

That's is sublime!

"let's get some other arm of the state to check the right box before killing someone, the president checking the box himself is just too unseemly"

"...strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means." Thomas Jefferson (explaining why he went ahead with the Louisiana Purchase even though he held it to be extra-Constitutional)

wow, john yoo has been around a long time

I am very, very wary of chipping away at habeas corpus, even though the Constitution provides for just that in cases of invasion or rebellion though Al-Awlaki might fit the case for treason:

"...whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States." 18 U.S.C. § 2381

But what's less clear is what Holder means by due process and I should very much like to see the admissable testimony of two witnesses as required by the Constitution. To me, this screams out for Congressional legislative clarification.

yeah we went over the treason thing on some other thread. basically it's impossible to prosecute.

I assume that the argument goes that as he was levying war against the US and was in a place that made it prohibitively difficult to apprehend him, he would just be killed as an enemy soldier. It's a blind spot in our jurisprudence and a loophole in both American and Common Law personal protections.

While it is possible to make a good case for summary execution of persons in Al-Awlaki's position, what is not necessary here is the cloak of mystery surrounding the standards that must be met, the process that must be followed and the safeguards against abuse. FFS, look at all the process involved in a death penalty case and how much abuse still happens in spite of all that.

afaics, what happens here is that a bunch of CIA or FBI gnomes finger some guy as a target, their boss takes their basket of 'intelligence', sifts it down and kicks it up the line until at some point it lands on Obama's desk and he signs a death warrant. How exactly does Obama know if one word of that intelligence is true? He doesn't. How easy would it be to fabricate this shit and start offing political opponents? Sorry, that's a "state secret"!