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which opens itself up for us to practice elitism over the other human beings that occupy planet earth.
Close enough.
which opens itself up for us to practice elitism over the other human beings that occupy planet earth.
I would have to respectfully disagree with that notion. It's very dangerous for Presidents, Dem or Repub to have the power to think they can declare any land they want as a war zone, without actually declaring war. We are creating MORE terrorists with that type of policy, which is exactly the type of policies Obama promised to end when running for office.
I believe an American needs to be charged and proof presented. They still refuse to show such proof. And the issue of his 16 year old American son is even worse, they never even accused him of any crime. They simply just targeted and killed him two weeks later, and said he should have had a more responsible father.
Now there is really nothing that can excuse that. That act alone, Obama should be arrested, charged, and put on trial, something he refuses to give some Americans.
That's all fine and dandy except you haven't really addressed the point: has the practice of warfare changed from lobsters walking around with muskets?
I never said that a president should be able to unilaterally declare any region of the world to be a war zone. My point is only that the times are a changing, and that clinging to a 200 year old do ent doesn't make sense. The task is to develop new procedural safeguards to check new legal innovations, not cling to antiquated ones.
Also, I'm still waiting on "clear proof" (again, whatever that means) that al-awlaki, or any of the other targeted "Americans" could be detained and charged as per the white paper's recommendation.
I understand you didn't say that, but my point is that this president has been pretty secretive and has really abused his power in expansion of wars. It's very easy now for him and his staff to claim anything a war zone (even though the wars are illegal to begin with) as justification for anything he wants to do, and to say things like "Al Qaeda" over and over again, and to say the priority is to "Save American lives" as a cover to deflect actually having to fully and honestly answer the questions of what legal authority and what proof they have. We all care about preventing "terrorists" from taking "American lives", but it's very clear they can't be trusted by simply just telling us that people are doing something wrong, and it is scary thinking that these powers will be adopted under other presidents. How far will they go with such unchecked power?
If they have been secretive about so many things, and clearly have lied about things, why should we trust them if they say they couldn't detain them? Again, they never accused the 16 year old of a crime. Drones may be a good tool for when it's truly needed under a real declared war against a true enemy. But these are strikes in countries where we have peace treaties with. We are the ones creating terrorists. We are killing 50 civilians for every "terrorist" we target, and they still don't have proof many times that that so called "terrorist" was actually a terrorist to begin with. Jeremy Scahill I think touched on that subject. You ask what clear proof means, but they won't show us ANY proof. Why? And why was his son killed? Where is the accusation that he did anything wrong?
Sean Hannity and the Republicans are really pounding Obama now on this and how he criticized Bush on torturing 3 people but yet just flat out murders Americans.
License to torture versus license to murder.
They could have won the election if they made a stink on this issue during the election. But, they were too busy supporting it. However, any attention and spotlight given to this issue is good.
$5 vy gets put on SA210's vaunted ignore list
Romney would have done no different.
And nobody made a stink about it during the election because:
1) The candidates agreed on this policy.
2) The general public didn't give a .
Holy crap, Cenk Uygur is tearing Obama to pieces on TYT Live right now, point by point.
Tbh, it's a pretty abusive use of executive power, it's probably worth giving a about even though the chances of it affecting the average joe are slim to none....
You might want to switch over to msnbc. The left is hammering him too. Ed Shultz is working on a stroke. In reality, that doesn't really matter though. Just talking heads. 11 senators (bipartisan) sent a letter to Obama asking for justification. That's about all you're gonna get.
Romney would have done no different.
And nobody made a stink about it during the election because:
1) The candidates agreed on this policy.
2) The general public didn't give a .
^ meant to quote sa210
Damn I missed Ed Scultz. I usually don't watch mainstream media because they ignore these issues and are filled with trash topics. But right now this is gaining a little steam. And yup, you are correct, talking heads. Republicans are using it to simply attack Obama rather than actually caring about the issue, they supported these policies but now pretending to care lol. I saw sorry kiss ass Chris Matthews do his brown nosing job of trying to pretend like he covered the story, pretending to be concerned but in the end still defending Obama.
But I still say, any attention on this issue right now is good attention.
I think your meme avalanche on spurstalk was the catalyst for the leaked white paper tbh.
My issue is lack of oversight, including on the legal construction. I thought Yoo was full of back in the day for the same exact reasons.
If the administration wants to make the argument to the SCOTUS that such power is warranted and cons utional, they should do so, instead of calling everything a secret and non-reviewable.
And personally, I do give a . Having some arbitrary 'high position, informed' government official dictating who gets his cons utional rights or not doesn't sound appealing to me.
My beef is that the determination of who 'waived' or not his cons utional rights is up to some third party that suddenly gets to decide that.
I agree with all that in principle, but nothing is going to change as long as the war on terra is in full swing. Governments always do ed up stuff during war, and no one in government has really pushed back against the imperial presidency since Watergate tbh.
not sure how you can separate people out at this point.
either we stop killing Al Qaeda leaders altogether or wipe them all out.
Let's see if I can't get on the ignore list.
Why can the President say anywhere is a warzone? Do you think he can declare that Omaha is a warzone? What about Manhattan? Why is there anything preventing him from declaring any domestic location is a warzone? Why hasn't he done so already?
Are there no good reasons for secrecy? Should the president be an open-book regarding every facet of his war powers? Do you think that doing so would help or hurt national security?
I'm not saying that everything is hunky dory. But you have no conception of the checks on the president's war making authority. Look at all the GITMO cases as an example.
Do you have any proof of these other things the president has been secretive of? Do you have any reason for distrust other than blind faith that the "government is hiding ?"
Do you understand the difference between facts/evidence and the procedure of instigating criminal accusations?
Who are these 50 civilians being killed a day? Are they on US soil? If they're overseas, what are they doing there? Are you claiming that the US has ins uted a policy of drone strikes on US tourists to the Eiffel Tower?
For the third time -- what's clear proof? Is is clear and convincing proof? Is it proof that shows terrorist participation beyond a reasonable doubt? What is it?
And finally, this is all wholly irrelevant to my point which is: war has changed, and the law needs to as well. Clinging to the fantasy that a 200 year old do ent is relevant to this topic today is beyond stupid. Instead of hashing out tired old talking points, why not think about new procedural safeguards to protect these supposed egregious cons utional violations.
But that's how waiver is adjudicated in every context. In court, the judge (3rd party) determines waiver.
But I think you're point is that there is no third party review of waiver here because the President (in the court example, a party) gets to determine the terrorist (the other party) "waived" his cons utional rights. There's no impartiality.
So, what if there was a special tribunal created to review these executive decisions. The tribunal's proceedings would be expedited and totally secret -- but there would be some semblance of judicial review. Problem then?
I gotta say, once this white paper was leaked, the msm was pretty much on top of it. Obviously left and right outlets had rationale to cover the story, but all major media outlets were all over this.
Yep. You're getting at the crux of the problem, which is a lack of transparency and oversight. IMO there is no reason this white paper needed to be leaked. It should have been released by the administration. It was not classified.
I would agree that unless this becomes some sort of popular political negative (like when the illegal domestic spying came to light), nothing is going to be done.
But I'd still like to register my dislike for power grabs like this one, especially those without oversight. Even more so when they directly affect American citizens and the cons utional rights granted to them.
It's a sad day in America when citizens are cheated of their rights like this. Or should be, IMO.
You can allow for after-the-fact oversight. Some of that already happens with FISA. It won't bring the dead back, but if there's a up, those responsible should face the music...
Again, the power granted by the cons ution to analyze the cons utionality of such legal orders is the judiciary. The executive claim that their legal interpretations are not to be subject to the judiciary is, prima facie, an abuse of separation of powers, and the hijacking of a power not granted to them.
Not a problem, and as I pointed out, post-facto oversight would be the very least that should be happening here. There's currently no checks and balances on this power, especially on the judiciary side, which is in charge of determining what's legal or not (or under which legal basis rights are 'waived' or flat out denied to an American citizen).
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