Bush and the Republicans took that power already, and installed it in the office of the President. Now that the president is from another party, they don’t want the office to have that power anymore.
It was pointed out years ago that the office of the POTUS was gaining more power, and no matter who was in the seat, this power would not be relinquished. So be very, very careful about ceding more power to the POTUS, because “your guy” is not going to be in the seat forever.
The definition of imminent doesnt change for each individual assassination tactic. The president has used drones to kill several citizens who did not present an imminent threat. He has refused to provide his definition of imminent in court. I can complain as much as I damn well please. If the president wasn’t using soviet tactics to hide the details of his assassination program, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
The definition of imminent certainly would change according to the circumstances. On a foreign battlefield we don’t have the luxury of intercepting someone on their way to commit a terrorist act the way we do domestically. If someone has taken over an airplane and on their way to crash it into crowded sports stadium we can’t wait until the plane is already on an unstoppable course.
The president gets to decide these things because congress has written no law defining them. And the details of this policy can certainly be kept secret as a matter of national security. Once congress creates new law to cover this they can complain that the president might be violating the law, but at the moment he’s following it.
I think it is more of a look at me, over here, sticking my thumb in Obama’s, the establishment Republicans’, and the establishment Democrats’ eyes.
I think this is his current version of Ron Paul’s audit the Fed push. He is calling for something that he sees as important and that is something neither Democrats nor Republicans want to talk about.
Your scenario is laughable when you look at the circumstances these assassinations have been carried out. It’s not a matter of waiting until a hijacked plane is on an “unstoppable course”. The government hasn’t even suggested this was the case with al-Awlaki and his son. What made his threat imminent in the eyes of Obama and Co. was that he was a senior alqaeda official. A claim they never bothered to support in court or otherwise. I didn’t realize all persons were entitled due process only because it was convenient: Well since we’re all here we may as well get on with his habeaus corpus thingy.
The “rules” to extrajudicial slayings can be kept secret? You’re reaching, bud. You would think it would be in our national interest to make these rules known. That way it would serve as an actual deterrent. It’s in the interest of public safety that people know bank robbery is illegal, no? Or do we lose the element of surprise.
Either your privy to state secrets or you’re talking out of your asshole. You have no idea if Obama is following the law because the details aren’t known. Your insistence on having "…and this goes for drones,too. " added to every law is silly. There are laws against murder. For all we know Obama is killing people who borrowed money from him and never paid back.
WillFarnaby, I hope you and yours have learned their lesson;
If you give additional powers to the office of the President when a Republican sits there, those powers do not magically disappear when a Democrat president is elected.
in other words, in future, be very, very careful about what powers you give away - you generally don’t ever get them back.
He has, however, gone Sen Paul one better when it comes to extravagant conjectures. Unless a drone attack on Jane Fonda is actually less plausible than Obama retiring his debts with extreme prejudice.
I don’t think libertarians are the ones that need to learn that lesson. We would be much better off if conservatives and progressives would learn that lesson though, I agree.
You would be in a much better position to preach about abuse of power if you guys had ever had any.
Did he say “Utes”?
I always thought that if the President wanted to execute a US citizen on US soil because he was a terrorist, the CIA would handle it. Quietly, so no one would even know he would be executed. Undetectable poison, that sort of thing. Or maybe just a bullet to the head by a sniper, no one could be sure who did it.
That said, I think the right and the left have valid concerns about drone strikes. Trusting the government just seems stupid, y’know?
We would have you know, the fiends cried, bristling, that in Hell we have all kinds of justice, since our government is an enlightened democracy.
Just so, says Jurgen: in an enlightened democracy one has all kinds of justice, and I would not dream of denying it. But you have not, you conceive, that lesser plague, my wife; and it is she whom I must continue to look for.
Oh, as you like, said they, so long as you do not criticise the exigencies of war-time. But certainly we are sorry to see you going into a country where the benighted people put up with an autocrat Who was not duly elected to His posi
tion. And why need you continue seeking your wife’s society when it is so much pleasanter living in Hell?
That would be (or would have, Og knows what the Patriot Act has done to all this shit) an impeachable offense, as the CIA is (or was) explicitly forbidden to operate on American soil.
You’re mistaken. It’s not that they don’t want the president to have this power anymore. It’s that they think they can make a political issue out of him having this power, neglecting that it is nothing he did but something Bush and his congress did that our current congress has refused to fix.
I’m sure there are some true libertarians who didn’t want the president to have this power in the first place. And maybe Paul is even one of them. But he is clearly bringing it up now to help his party, not his ideals. He’s clearly blaming the Democrats and the Democratic administration for the problem, when it was created by Bush when he declared the War on Terror and got Congress to agree.
This is an issue because it sounds bad and Republicans hope they can pin it on Obama. And shit-for brains progressives and liberals don’t seem to get the ploy and are instead playing into their hands.
Of course it would be impeachable. But the whole idea is that, being a spy organization, they could keep it secret at least long enough for the President to get out of office. And, if done correctly, it would be impossible to link back to the President himself.
Exactly. The President calls his trusted CIA liaison into his office and says, “This is completely off the record, this meeting did not happen. You know, Cenk Ugyar is becoming quite the problem. He is turning too many young voters away from the Democratic Party. Can’t something be done about him? Something permanent?”
The CIA liaison nods and says, “Yes, we have the tools, and of course, we can do it in such a way that no one can trace it back to us.”
The President nods. “That’s what i wanted to hear. We understand one another then.”
CIA liaison. “Yes. Consider it done.”
A week or two later, Cenk Ugyar has a heart attack. Sad day for him!
Note that the term “assassinate” was never used and the only person who knows the President asked for it is the liaison. For everyone at the CIA, it’s a murky “Highest levels of government” kind of thing. The only way to get the President on the hook would be by turning the liaison, and even then, it’s “he said, she said” and “I meant I wanted Ugyar to be permanently thrown off Current TV, not assassinated!”