Discussion for article #223068
Good. One of the least visible or understood accomplishment of the Obama administration is the reshaping of the courts. Which makes the 16 election so important to continue in the other progressive traditions. If only for four years, Hillary.
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Good. The legal reasoning in that memo was flawless.
Opposition to the targeted strikes on al Qaeda targets is a policy question, not a legal one. That the United States government is legally authorized to strike combatants in a declared war, or to use deadly force against people who are putting together attacks on our civilians, is inarguably true.
If you want to argue that it’s a bad idea, or a bad idea in certain cases, by all means, go right ahead - but Barron wasn’t hired to write a memo about whether it was a good idea. He was directed to write a memo discussing its legality.
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BS. The legal reasoning demonstrated in that memo should have gotten the author’s law degree stripped from him, not placed him on the bench. Fifth amendment of the Constitution:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger
Please explain, legally, how the president or high ranking official, has the authority to be the prosecutor, judge, jury, and order an execution with no over sight at all. It is this insane partisan ideoglogy that justifies the murder of 16 year old US citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and 9 other people by drone while he sat at a cafe in Yemen. A country we are not a war with. He had no ties at all to terrorism aside from the fact that his father was a member of al-Qaeda, a father he hadn’t spoken to in years. But someone decided he needed to die. And since there is no oversight thanks to this hack lawyer, we will never know who or why.
The legality of that memo has all of the weight of the memo written by John Yoo justifying torture. That one was so bad that Obama signed an executive order revoking all legal guidance written by John Yoo on his second day of office. Here is hoping that future presidents will have the wisdom to do the same with anything written by this guy. You really have to be wearing your partisan blinders to think letting any president unilaterally label someone an enemy of the state is a good thing. Would you have been happy if Sarah Palin had that power?
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The memo neither you or joefromLowell have read?
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It’s 2014. You know the answers to all of the questions you’re asking.
I know the prepared responses you’re waiting to use.
You might or might not know the standard rebuttals to those responses. If you do, you already have a set of replies that I already know. Maybe two or three rounds after that, you actually raise a meaningful point.
But probably not. It’s 2014, and people who think that it’s some kind of meaningful point to pretend not to know what the September 2001 AUMF is, so that you have to walk them through it, so they can say the thing they’ve practiced saying about the AUMF, are not people that I’m interested in having a discussion with.
I mean, seriously? “We’re not at war with Yemen?” This is not a serious argument; this is playing dumb so you can get an excuse to read from your prepared remarks.
There’s really no reason to think there’s anything different in the OLC memo’s reasoning than in the Justice Department memo that was leaked. I’m assuming it’s the same argument, though it’s possible I’m mistaken about that.
There is nothing, anywhere in the AUMF, that authorizes the president to order the assassination of an American citizen. That is a power Obama claimed all for himself. Bush never had the balls to claim such far over reaching power.
I would note that in 2008 Obama repeatedly talked about the importance of curbing the power of the executive under the AUMF, something he was clearly lying about.
I do note that you are perfectly okay with any politician who manages their way near the top echelons of power ordering the execution of US citizens with no oversight. Which is quite disgusting. Can’t wait until an R president start doing the same thing and see how you feel about it then.
Good, bad or indifferent, this comes off with all the appearance of “reward for services rendered”. Which on the face of it is nothing “better” than was done with Yoo and a lot of others who blatantly facilitated the untrammeled violation of the US Constitution.
The larger issue is not in this individual.
The larger issue presents itself in the fact that the violations facilitated by Yoo and others (who were subsequently rewarded with appointments) persist unadjudicated to this very day. This from a Judicial Branch that has been playing at duck, dodge, and hide thru two Presidential Administrations.
Every hour that these Matters remain undecided is another hour in which the Public has their own faith and understanding of the Constitution itself cast into doubt and called into question. I can think of no situation short of open civil insurrection which might be more dangerous in the long term to American Constitutional Government than to have the public doubt the validity and the strength of the Bill of Rights, or of the Constitution itself.
And yet, this is exactly the situation into which these men have placed not only the Government, but the Public as well.
To place these men in higher judicial office while so much turns on the validity of their sometimes questionable judgements is bad for the stature of the Judiciary. Such events cast a shadow over the administration of government based upon legal fairness, rather than the potential promise of reward for pliable opinions which may serve the momentary needs of any current or former Political administration.