Assassin In Chief?

- Herbert W. Titus and William J. Olson


Exercising a power that no prior president ever thought he possessed — a power that no prior president is known to have exercised — President Obama admitted that he ordered the execution of American citizens, not on a battlefield, based on his belief that they were involved in terrorist activities. It is known that at least three U.S. citizens, including a 16-year old boy, were killed on the president’s order in drone strikes in Yemen in 2011.

As the worldwide drone program ramps up, there have been increasing calls for the president to reveal the basis for his claimed authority. Only a few weeks ago, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon denied both the ACLU’s and New York Times‘ requests under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain any and all legal documents prepared in support of the president’s claim of unilateral powers. While Judge McMahon was concerned that the documents “implicate serious issues about the limits on the power of the Executive Branch under the Constitution and laws of the United States, and about whether we are indeed a nation of laws not of men,” she felt constrained by precedent to withhold them. Now, a bipartisan group of 11 senators has written a letter to president Obama asking for “any and all legal opinions” that describe the basis for his claimed authority to “deliberately kill American citizens.”

However, not until the Senate began gathering information for hearings on John Brennan’s confirmation as CIA director, to begin February 7, has public attention finally been focused on this remarkable presidential usurpation of power.

On the night of February 4, the walls of secrecy were breached when NBC News released a leaked U.S. Justice Department White Paper entitled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa’ida or An Associated Force.” Now we can see why the Department of Justice has been so reluctant to share the basis for its legal analysis. It is deeply flawed — based on a perverse view of the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause. Additionally, the white paper completely ignores the procedural protections expressly provided in the Constitution’s Third Article — those specifically designed to prohibit the president from serving as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner.

The white paper does not seek to delimit the federal power to kill citizens, but simply sets out a category of “targeted killing” of American citizens off the battlefield on foreign soil which it deems to be clearly authorized. Moreover, this power is not vested exclusively in the president, or even the secretary of defense, or even officials within the Department of Defense — rather, it can be relied on by other senior officials of unspecified rank elsewhere in government.

According to the white paper, there are only three requirements to order a killing. First, “an informed high-level official of the U.S. government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States.” Second, capture is “infeasible.” And third, the ” operation would be conducted in a manner consistent with the applicable law of war principles.” Indeed, from the white paper, it is not clear why killings of U.S. citizens on American soil would be judged by a different standard.

Mimicking a judicial opinion, the White Paper employs pragmatic tests developed by the courts to supplant the plain meaning of the Fifth Amendment Due Process and Fourth Amendment Search and Seizure texts. Balancing away the constitutionally protected interests of the citizen in life, liberty, and property against the more important “‘realities’ of the conflict and the weight of the government’s interest in protecting its citizens from an imminent attack,” the Justice Department lawyers have produced a document worthy of the King Council’s Court of Star Chamber — concluding that the U.S. Constitution would not require the government to provide notice of charges, or a right to be heard, “before using lethal force” on a U.S. citizen suspected of terrorist activity against his country. How very convenient. The Obama administration lawyers appear to have forgotten that the Star Chamber was abolished by the English Parliament in 1641 in order to restore the rule of law adjudicated by an independent judiciary, terminating the rule of men administered by the king’s courtiers.

For more of the article go to: http://www.westernjournalism.com/assassin-in-chief/

ROVE DECLARES WAR ON TEA PARTY

- Ben Shapiro, Breitbart

The battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party has begun. On one side is the Tea Party. On the other side stand Karl Rove and his establishment team, posing as tacticians while quietly undermining conservatism.

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the “biggest donors in the Republican Party” have joined forces with Karl Rove and Steven J. Law, president of American Crossroads, to create the Conservative Victory Project. The Times reports that this new group will dedicate itself to “recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party’s effort to win control of the Senate.” The group points to candidates like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Richard Mourdock in Indiana as examples of Tea Party primary picks going sideways in major Senatorial battles.

But it is American Crossroads and its ilk that have run the GOP into the ground. Spending millions of dollars on useless 30,000-ft. advertising campaigns during the last election cycle, training candidates to soften conservatism in order to appeal to “moderates,” blowing up the federal budget under George W. Bush as a bipartisan tactic – all of those strategies led the party to a disastrous defeat in 2012. The Tea Party, which may nominate losers from time to time, also brought the Republicans their historic 2010 Congressional victory. If Tea Party candidates lose, it’s because they weren’t good candidates; if GOP establishment candidates lose, it’s because they weren’t good conservatives. The choice for actual conservatives should be easy.

But it isn’t. The Bush insider team that helped lead to the rise of Barack Obama insists that they, and only they, know the path to victory. As the Times reports, Conservative Victory Project won’t merely protect incumbents – it will challenge sitting Congresspeople of the Tea Party variety, including six-term Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King, who may run for Senate. “We’re concerned about Steve King’s Todd Akin problem,” Law told the Times – with whom he seems far too friendly. “This is an example of candidate discipline and how it would play in a general election. All of the things he’s said are going to be hung around his neck.”

For more of the article go to: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/02/03/Rove-declares-war-Tea-Party

Trying to nudge the Constitution out of place

Are Americans obsessed with founding documents?

- Paul E. Peterson

Will 2013 come to be known as the year of presidential decree? The year the president ignored Congress, changed the rules of government, and put into place whatever policies he saw fit? The year the United States ended what has been called its “obsession” with its Constitution?

During his first term, President Obama issued executive orders in lieu of laws passed by Congress, signed executive agreements with foreign countries in lieu of treaties ratified by the Senate, and formulated burdensome regulations with little legislative justification. As the administration begins its second term, it is expressing extreme frustration at the constitutional powers held by the House of Representatives. To counter, the administration is threatening to catapult presidential power to levels attained only by such Machiavellian politicians as Otto von Bismarck, who consolidated executive power vis-a-vis the German parliament and local fiefdoms in the late 19th century.

The groundwork for expanded constitutional authority was laid in a recent op-ed piece by Michael Seidman in the New York Times, who argues that “our obsession with our Constitution has saddled us with a dysfunctional political system.” The president should “disobey” the Constitution if he thinks it is sensible to do so, the Georgetown law professor writes. Congress should be required to defend its power over the purse “on policy grounds,” not on some abstruse constitutional provision that says only Congress has the power to tax and spend. “Much constitutional language is broad enough to encompass an almost infinitely wide range of positions,” he says.

If a call for constitutional disobedience is openly advocated in the nation’s leading liberal newspaper, one must assume similar arguments, phrased more carefully, are being elaborated by skilled attorneys inside the White House.

In the year ahead, we can anticipate several things. First, the president will refuse to cut spending by the amount needed to win congressional support for the lifting of the legislatively established debt ceiling. He will instead simply ignore the debt ceiling, claiming that subsequent appropriations have tacitly raised the ceiling automatically. As the president has already said this year: “While I will negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws they passed.” That sentence is unambiguous. The president promises to ignore the debt ceiling so he can have additional leverage in the upcoming negotiations over spending levels. Never let a law stand in the way of the pursuit of power.

For more of the article go to: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/10/trying-to-nudge-the-constitution-out-of-place/#.UO8sO6N00Rg.twitter