Thank God We Got Rid Of That Dangerous Cowboy
And are now once again a country of laws, with checks and balances to limit power and protect our rights
“At bottom, the administration is asserting the unreviewable authority to kill any American whom the president declares to be an enemy of the state,” Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU’s deputy legal director, said in a statement.
Media, Morality, Nanny State, People, Politics | Mr. Bingley | 
March 5, 2012 6:49 am
Subscribe
A terrorist is a terrorist regardless of nationality and they all need to be exterminated, assassinated, killed, wiped out, whatever term you want to use.
Just playing devil’s advocate here, but Public Law 107-40 was passed Sept 18th, 2001…while said cowboy was in office. This is my big “told you so” moment. Anyone that supports Paul can suck it, considering he voted this behemoth raping of checks and balances into existence.
P.L.107-40 is what they’re using as the basis for this…just like the Bush administration said they would if it came down to using it.
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-107publ40
Remember, for ten years now all any administration had to do was label someone a terrorist or related to terrorism to pull this shit. Ironically, the NDAA that everyone railed about so much was a limitation of this bill. But that would require researching things and the American public on either side of the aisle would far rather have talking heads tell them what to do.
And your point is, Ebola?
Yes, Dubya signed the bill. So? Obama campaigned on being the Not Dubya. Is this a debate on who is accelerating the slide down the slippery slope? The answer to that is “Us”.
What this really shows is that big government should not be trusted. Period. Over-regulation and out-of-control bureaucrats are not the way to run anything.
This helps flesh out that
Alcee Hastings bill that authorized turning closed military bases into detention centers.
My point? Besides the massive “told you so”? This is a congressional issue. THEY & Bush opened the door for this administration to do this. Of fucking course they’re going to use it too it’s fullest extent. The current administration specifically requested that the NDAA verbiage limiting 107-40 be rescinded. Both sides are guilty for this thing even existing, much less being used.
The Bush administration used this as an excused work around of Reagan’s Executive Order 12333, making illegal the use of US forces to “assassinate”…Both sides have used this in one way or another.
So I think that in and of itself is a valuable point. Making it sound like Bush is somehow innocent concerning 107-40 is disingenuous at best and worse, laid the legal groundwork for its use against American citizens.
Remember, I’m a proponent for the return of Machiavellian ROE. The criminal fuckwad they toasted can rot in hell as far as I’m concerned, but this has opened a whole new can of worms, as I am not however, up for allowing the executive branch free reign on anyone labeled a terrorist. Hell, by the documents verbiage they don’t even have to label them a terrorist technically. Reasonable doubt is not even a necessity. This falls at the feet of Bush and Congress in 2001. The current administration using it is legal, thanks to them. Been saying it was coming for fucking years, suddenly everyone is surprised.
If this doesn’t get diced, you can prepare for an all new method of eliminating political dissent. Everyone can bitch all they want that it’s simply not possible, but even given the circumstances no one ever thought the US would start whacking it’s own unless they wouldn’t come in peaceably when the capture attempt came.
Besides the massive “told you so”?
I sort of got that message, Ebola. One might say that you have massively overkilled on the “told you so”. In that regards, you’re starting to sound like a Democrat.
My point is in three parts:
Part 1. Got it. No need for more carpet bombing. After a point, gloating becomes counter-productive. I speak from personal experience.
Part 2. It’s not a Congressional issue. It’s a BIG GOVERNMENT issue. We start with fixing Congress, not an easy task at best. And made harder by arguing about which president to blame for this mess.
Part 3: I blame Bush AND Obama. Bush jumped on the slippery slope; Obama lit the JATO units to speed up the trip to the bottom. Which, in the long run, doesn’t mean a damn thing when we crash and burn.
So, a little focus is in order.
I fail to see how it’s not a Congressional issue. It was legislation formed and passed via Congress and Congress is the only branch of government that can strike it down, seeing as it is not a Constitutional violation at it’s core.
Big Government in this case is just another rallying cry. This has everything to do with Congressional passage of delimited checks and balances in a singular category allowing the Executive branch mass dominance over both the Court and the Legislature in said category. It is not Big Government. It is Imperialization, in point of fact.
Congress and Big Government are not identical, they two parts of the same problem. One feeds the other in a self-sustaining cycle.
Nor is Big Government a “rallying cry”. Remember what I do for a living, Ebola, and it ain’t designing dams. Read up on “administrative law”, especially as it applies to the Code of Federal Regulations, and see how many of our problems stem from agencies giving themselves too much power, without direct Congressional approval.
(Hint: How do you think Holder is able to justify what outrages you? I don’t believe that the original legislation says anything about The Prez having the “unreviewable authority to kill any American whom the president declares to be an enemy of the state”, a condition that even the ACLU is aghast over. He got here from somewhere. )
To fix Congress, you need to fix Big Government. To fix Big Government, you need to fix Congress. This is a real time problem, not theoretical.
In other words, focus your outrage on the current system, not the former leaders. Yeah, Bush screwed up. But as I keep on telling the lefties, he’s gone, so deal with the situation as it is, not as you want it to be.
This is a circular argument guys. Jeff is correct about “Big Government”, it manifests itself by fiat, that is we’ll just write a regulation. The Executive Branch has always tried to circumvent laws it finds inconvient to it’s agenda. I am not against taking out terrorists foreign or domestic but it is a slippery slope when done with impunity.
The only thing I said was that acting as though Bush was innocent on the matter…as per the headline of this thread…is disingenuous. Pointing that out does not make me focused on Bush: it is a lucid assessment.
The blanket definition of Big Government is centralization of Federal power taken en mass from the States in so far as I’ve ever gathered. This isn’t an agency endowing itself power…this was the god damn Legislative branch of our government handing it to the Executive branch carte blanche more than ten years ago. A rather large and distinct difference. Fixing “Big Government” isn’t going to do dick about this as it was never a function of the States. Fixing who you select as Congressmen really is about all that will. Then throw in that a good number of the people that voted this idiotic handoff of power are in fact still in office. So yes, I’d say shitcan their asses.
Also keep in mind, that in legal terms this is really and truly a return to pre-Reagan policies concerning assassination. We essentially had no laws in place concerning the engagement of combatant citizens, much less general targeted assassinations till Reagan.
Correct, Major Dad. We were talking past each other on most counts.
I’m just tired of blaming Bush for our problems. Granted, he was no saint, but it’s clear that much of the rot started even before Bush. At the least, he didn’t eagerly jump on the jet powered sled heading for hell. MAYBE reluctantly, but not eagerly. Unlike another certain President that we all know…..
In any case, I prefer to focus on the problems as they exist, not as they might have been.
So, for those denouncing this particular manifestation of Big Government, are we to presume that it should be unlawful for the US military to kill an enemy of the USA, when he is carrying out his hostile operations in a foreign country in time of war (de facto or de jure), rather than in the USA itself, if said enemy is an American citizen?
@ Michael: The issue is not the assassination of enemy combatants, American or otherwise. That particular Executive advent was a result of the Reagan administration, as noted earlier. The problem is the actual wording of the document (P.L.107-40) as it leaves to the Executive branch full power to do whatever it pleases as long as it labels something “terrorist” or “related to terror.” That means you can quietly eliminate social dissent legally if you so choose, by simply labeling it as a terrorist threat to public security.
I’m all for assassination as it is a legitimate form of battlefield control and a National Defense measure. I’ve never understood how allowing a centralized threat to the US continue to respire due to some overarching “moral” composite is acceptable in any fashion. However, as we are a nation of laws, we do not get to pick and choose when it comes to the execution of our laws if we wish to remain a lawful nation. Politically it’s hard to argue that you support enforcing immigration laws or some such when you turn around and approve the suspension of Habeas Corpus on an individual basis. Effective method of denuding any moral or logical highground for the right, in that case. Though it should be noted that from a Constitutional aspect this might fulfill the requirements for “…shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it” portion of Sec. 9, Art I. However that argument has not been made concerning this case. Its failure to be addressed when added to the wording of this decade old policy sets poor legal precedent. What is worse, is that due to the wording of this bill, the Executive branch bears to Judicial or Legislative oversight concerning these matters. There are no checks and balances, something the Nation was built on.
It’s sort of like arguing that Welfare and Social Security are Constitutional on the basis that the phrase “promote the general Welfare” is mentioned in the Constitution. By that skewed logic, anything can be linguistically arranged to be for the “welfare” of both citizens and state. The Federal Government by that logic, can mandate that everyone will eat four bananas a week: Because they are healthy.
Also, he was popped by a hellfire and was not directly engaging US troops. We in the military have every capability under LOAC to turn someone into putty that is a direct threat, as in direct fire. Indirectly? We can’t touch them. If they want to sit in front of some FOB and clean their weapons…we can’t touch them, regardless of whether those weapons will doubtless be used on us later in the night. Once again, all about the law. If we simply left it at labeling, all you would need is some vague notion of a threat to lay waste to the landscape.
@JeffS: We’re all tired of people blaming Bush. Catch is on this that he is directly culpable: He is at fault as the US President that signed this. Glossing over this makes us every bit as guilty as the left. They blame him for shit they can’t prove or is blatantly illegitimate…and we ignore what he actually did do wrong. His signature is on the legislation, he read it and that makes him to blame as the final portion of the system. Nor, as a Nation of Law, should that be ignored because it is not “in the present.” That is tantamount to saying killers shouldn’t rot in prison because they’re not currently in the act of killing someone, “Oh well, they’re already dead…no living in the past!”