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FBI Director: I Have to Check to See If Obama Has the Right to Assassinate Americans On U.S. Soil
Fox News reports:
FBI Director Robert Mueller on Wednesday said he would have to go back and check with the Department of Justice whether Attorney General Eric Holder’s “[criteria] for the targeted killing of Americans also applied to Americans inside the U.S.
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“I have to go back. Uh, I’m not certain whether that was addressed or not,” Mueller said when asked by Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., about a distinction between domestic and foreign targeting
Graves followed up asking whether “from a historical perspective,” the federal government has “the ability to kill a U.S. citizen on United States soil or just overseas.”
“I’m going to defer that to others in the Department of Justice,” Mueller replied.
Indeed, Holder’s Monday speech at Northwestern University seemed to leave the door open.
Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley writes:
One would hope that the FBI Director would have a handle on a few details guiding his responsibilities, including whether he can kill citizens without a charge or court order.
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He appeared unclear whether he had the power under the Obama Kill Doctrine or, in the very least, was unwilling to discuss that power. For civil libertarians, the answer should be easy: “Of course, I do not have that power under the Constitution.”
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The claim that they are following self-imposed “limits” which are meaningless — particularly in a system that is premised on the availability of judicial review. The Administration has never said that the [Law Of Armed Conflicts] does not allow the same powers to be used in the United States. It would be an easy thing to state. Holder can affirmatively state that the President’s inherent power to kill citizens exists only outside of the country. He can then explain where those limits are found in the Constitution and why they do not apply equally to a citizen in London or Berlin. Holder was not describing a constitutional process of review. They have dressed up a self-imposed review of a unilateral power as due process. Any authoritarian measure can be dressed up as carefully executed according to balancing tests, but that does not constitute any real constitutional analysis. It is at best a loose analogy to constitutional analysis.
When reporters asked the Justice Department about Mueller’s apparent uncertainty, they responded that the answer is “pretty straightforward.” They then offered an evasive response. They simply said (as we all know) that “[t]he legal framework (Holder) laid out applies to U.S. citizens outside of U.S.” We got that from the use of the word “abroad.” However, the question is how this inherent authority is limited as it has been articulated by Holder and others. What is the limiting principle? If the President cannot order the killing of a citizen in the United States, Holder can simply say so (and inform the FBI Director who would likely be involved in such a killing). In doing so, he can then explain the source of that limitation and why it does not apply with citizens in places like London. What we have is a purely internal review that balances the practicality of arrest and the urgency of the matter in the view of the President. Since the panel is the extension of his authority, he can presumably disregard their recommendations or order a killing without their approval. Since the Administration has emphasized that the “battlefield” in this “war on terror” is not limited to a particular country, the assumption is that the President’s authority is commensurate with that threat or limitless theater of operation. Indeed, the Justice Department has repeatedly stated that the war is being fought in the United States as well as other nations.
Thus, Mueller’s uncertainty is understandable . . . and dangerous. The Framers created a system of objective due process in a system of checks and balances. Obama has introduced an undefined and self-imposed system of review ….
Before you assume that Mueller’s comments are being blown out of proportion, remember that it has been clear for some time that Obama has claimed the power to assassinate U.S. citizens within the U.S. As we pointed out in December:
I’ve previously noted that Obama says that he can assassinate American citizens living on U.S. soil.
This admittedly sounds over-the-top. But one of the nation’s top constitutional and military law experts – Jonathan Turley – agrees.
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Turley said [on C-Span]:
President Obama has just stated a policy that he can have any American citizen killed without any charge, without any review, except his own. If he’s satisfied that you are a terrorist, he says that he can kill you anywhere in the world including in the United States.
Two of his aides just … reaffirmed they believe that American citizens can be killed on the order of the President anywhere including the United States.
You’ve now got a president who says that he can kill you on his own discretion. He can jail you indefinitely on his own discretion
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I don’t think the the Framers ever anticipated that [the American people would be so apathetic]. They assumed that people would hold their liberties close, and that they wouldn’t relax …
Indeed, given that virtually any American could be considered a suspected terrorist these days, no one is safe from an all-powerful president’s whims.
As I noted in another context, circular reasoning provides all the justification needed:
The government’s indefinite detention policy – stripped of it’s spin – is literally insane, and based on circular reasoning. Stripped of p.r., this is the actual policy:
- If you are an enemy combatant or a threat to national security, we will detain you indefinitely until the war is over
- It is a perpetual war, which will never be over
- Neither you or your lawyers have a right to see the evidence against you, nor to face your accusers
- But trust us, we know you are an enemy combatant and a threat to national security
- We may torture you (and try to cover up the fact that you were tortured), because you are an enemy combatant, and so basic rights of a prisoner guaranteed by the Geneva Convention don’t apply to you
- Since you admitted that you’re a bad guy (while trying to tell us whatever you think we want to hear to make the torture stop), it proves that we should hold you in indefinite detention
See how that works?
And – given that U.S. soldiers admit that if they accidentally kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, they then “drop” automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they were militants – it is unlikely that the government would ever admit that an American citizen it assassinated was an innocent civilian who has nothing at all to do with terrorism.
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good post. remember what the Scooter Libby jury said. This was an easy decision but where the hell are the other members of the administration?
There you go. The "government" is simply a front of incompetent useful idiots. This was a "corporate" job.
Puhleeez,
the government has been killing it's own citizens for arbitrary reasons since governance was invented.
But in the good old days they at least had the decorum to make it look like an accident or something. You might be found pumped full of LSD and wandering the highway at night. Later they started punking people in death, like drowning them in a gay bathhouse. Now they don't even bother with those things ... they just drone you.
and guess what? just like religion same people who use the government as a shill to kill other citizens would merely use something else as a shill to kill other citizens if by magic all government up and vanished tomorrow.
ok, i see your logic... now I should just accept and be happy about the fact that the government is controlled by a bunch of corrupt murding banker psychopaths. makes perfect sense. /s
Have no problems with government being controlled by religious zealotry in the form of mullahs, ayatollahs and the like.
The next time the government is not controlled by some group using typical mob dynamics to usurp rights from the individual, come find me it will be the first.
THIS USA FEDERAL LAW proves the Rabbis own and run the most powerful western nation (a so-called "Judeo-Christian" nation, oxymoronic in the extreme, right up there with "mid east peace process"). The law is consistent with your constant, bothersome, lying rants and bigotry against Islam, your state of being a Rabbi-sycophant-enabler.
There is no analogous law giving similar power to any mullah or ayatollah. Just as the USA has no "unbreakable bond" with any other nation as it does with the "Jewish Nation" of Israel.
The current discussion (an alleged authority to kill otherwise innocent USA citizens) is consistent with Rabbinical/Talmudic law, which defines only "Judaics" as human, and all non-Judaics as non-human. If you aren't elevating the Rabbis and their Jewish state, you deserve only death. Rabbi-enablers are temporarily exempt from the death penalty.
Why limit it to mullahs? I would think any theocracy, democratic or otherwise, should qualify.
Puh-leeze.
This was all settled during the last administration. The President can do whatever the fuck he wants to anyone he designates an enemy combatant.
This is not because it's "legal," but because no one can STOP HIM.
Where's everyone BEEN the past decade?
Shoot Bernankie!
I think the awkward phase is just about over. Our founding fathers disagreed on many things, but extrajudicial killings and detention were something they all agreed on.
It is getting close to the time we may have to do something.
The right to rebellion and revolution has been affirmed by the united states supreme court on several occasions, particularly when abjudicating issues rwgarding the civil war. However they noted rhose rights are only enfirceable if the rebellion succeeds, a logical and practical answer.
The mere act of typing that comment is probably enough for you to be deemed a ter-rist and dealt with accordingly. Vaya con Dios, friend.
Thanks for sharing and continue the hard work GW!
A number of reasons I will never visit the USA unless I absolutely have to.
DavidC
You're making more out of this than there is. I don't think you would be taking any sort of risk unless you are on their radar for some reason. It's just that, in principle, you don't want your government doing this kind of crap. It's not like Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia where people would be taken away in the night and never seen again. Many countries have "the disappaered." The US, as far as I know, has no such situation. We do have a very sick and dysfunctional federal government.
People aren't disappeared in the USA???
Are you out of your ever-loving frigging mind, sonny? Have you ever read a newspaper --- or a book --- in your life, clownster??
Never heard of extreme rendition?
Never heard of all those activists in America who were and are being "preemptively arrested" -- first under the Bush administration, and now under the Obama administration.
Never heard of all those whistleblowers that Obama has gone after --- more than all previous US presidents added together??????
Jaysus H. on a Harley, son!
Never heard of that Padilla fellow they kept on ice for sooooo long?
Never heard of Bradley Manning? Take some time out of playing with yourself, subpoenas, and look into what they did to him during his illegally lengthy incarceration, before finally charging him with anything!
Geez, ignorance is bliss so you must the most blissful mofo on the planet, kiddo????
...it's not like Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia where people would be taken away in the night and never seen again. Many countries have "the disappaered." The US, as far as I know, has no such situation.
The point is, all the frameworks are in place now for such things to happen. And why would you know about it? If your mouthy libertarian neighbour gets his house raided in the middle of the day by state stormtroopers, and gets killed in the process, how will you know whether he was 'resisting arrest' or not? That he 'pulled a gun on the officers, who feared for their lives while just doing their sworn duty'?
Ask too many questions and they might decide you're probably in violation of some federal statute, too. Which, as it happens, you almost certainly are, along with the rest of the population.
"The point is, all the frameworks are in place now for such things to happen."
While I appreciate the sentiment of your remarks, NEGATIVE, this has been going on for quite some time in America!
I realize many blissfully ignoramuses which to believe in TV reality, white hats and black hats, everyone is either a good guy or bad guy, but life is far harsher than your TV reality.
Please learn something about all those same people occupying various positions in administrations which are supposedly from different political parties.
Learn to recognize the same names occurring over, and over, and over again in each and every Republicon and Faux crat administration: Linda Chavez in Carter, then again in Reagan, but Bush failed to get her appointed due to her employing subwage illegal immigrants.
And Eliot Abrams in Carter, then again in Geo. W. Bush.
The Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner in Geo. H.W. Bush, then again in Clinton and again in Obama's.
Gen. Clapper was part of Bush's "Iraqi fabricated WMD intel" team -- and Obama appointed him as DNI.
Obama has appointed ALL those consultants involved in Cheney-Poindexter Total Information Awarness Project to his administration, along with some from Schwarzenegger's California administration, etc., etc., etc.
Awaken, my good friend!
How about those cases of no knock SWAT break-ins entering the wrong house and killing the innocent residents?
Regrettable but understandable, and therefor justifiable, collateral damage.
When you realize that we're really nothing but their livestock, the meaning of life becomes clearer. Livestock occasionally escape.
I'm sure that SWAT would spin it such that the innocent residents had it coming. Resisting arrest. Failure to comply with a lawful order -- Bang!
Cops are untouchable.
Completely justified. Someone was smoking weed.
Police Power out of control:
http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/16/pre-crime-policing
http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/01/45-swat-raids-per-day
http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/17/flashbangs-under-fire
http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/14/chicagos-thick-blue-wall
http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/01/jericho-bile
http://reason.com/archives/2009/10/05/scenes-from-a-crackdown
http://reason.com/archives/2009/09/28/the-infallible-prosecutor
http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/19/sheriff-joes-enabler
No, it was a mother lifting her hemp shirt so her baby could breast feed.
Dito BJ . . . . it is morons like AeroJet that lived in Germany and the USSR prior to and during WWII - they allowed their "leaders" and "government" more and more power. In the end they got so out of control they ended up killing close to 100 million people between those two countries alone! Those who ignore history are bound to repeat it . . . .
The millions of deaths for the USSR (WWII) was the result of Nazi Germany. Yeah, Stalin was ruthless (and their System sucked), but that was THEIR land, and Stalin, like any real "leader," wasn't going to hand it over. In a way you can look at this just like the Iran/Iraq war, as the US was aiding both sides.
A good point to remember is this: the German Jews who resisted had a HIGHER survival rate than those who "went along."
bill hicks
ruby ridge
waco
"Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration – that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There's no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather." -- Bill Hicks
Haymarket Affair
Shay's Rebellion
Outstanding, Seer, and let us never forget the Ludlow Massacre, where the first historic drive by slaughter took place, invented by the Rockefeller-hired thugs!
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rockefellers/sfeature/sf_8.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre
(The UMWA site below is a bit off on the body count, it was actually over 27, and some bodies unaccounted for, so probably more.)
http://www.umwa.org/?q=content/ludlow-massacre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6kuvBnNNUs
Und vat makes you think your are safe from our UAV's and assasins you foreign hund who is posting on the enemies website. Ya I got citizenship, a nice salary, per diem when I travel, medical benefits, und der TV is much better here in America. Not too many more years and I'll be vested in der pension. You can have East Germany.
I don't have to visit, I already live here.....
Huh...and I thought MURDER was illegal and immoral....After all that is what we are talking about here...a licence to murder whomever, whenever. Holy shit people.
Murder is only illegal for the peasantry.
"Constitutional Scholar" my ass.
Some "Constitutional Scholars" study the Document only to find ways to circumvent it's strictures.
I think affirmative action might belong in that sentence.
We can only hope Obomba is suicidal.
He clearly has the right to kill himself on American soil.
assuming he really was born in hawaii
assuming he really was born in hawaii
After an extensive investigation, Sheriff Joe Arpio of AZ, say's there is NO VERIFIABLE BC for him, from Hawaii, and the one shown in the media, is / has been determined to be a fake.
Also BHO's SS# is/was issued in Connecticut.
Google it.
Hummm, that should earn Sheriff Joe a drone tipped with his own, personal Hell Cat missile.
What clued him in? The fact that it was signed by U.K.L. Lee?
Google is for folks who don't mind walking around with toilet paper on their shoes... use startpage.com instead.
Of course the federal government can order the killing of American citizens.
There is compelling evidence for this authority and its use.
I saw it in a Jason Bourn movie.
That's sufficient legal precedent, is it not?
Mr. Attorney General Holder? Mr. AG Holder?
I wouldn't worry - after all, he didn't say they HAVE the right, he said he had to check. And anyway, I'm pretty sure they'll only kill people who they think kinda deserve it anyway, so most of us shouldn't generally have anything to worry about in any case, 'long as we don't do anything bad.
Son, I just added you to the official kill list.
Walk carefully, now.
Yeah, hopefully your posting to fringe blogs will not be misconstrued.
Yeah, same for you.