Obama and assassinations
no this thread isnt about assassinating the president, so dont even try it
what i wanted to talk about was president obamas authorization of the use of assassnation against american citizens
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/07/assassinations
this is very very disturbing to me, the idea that the federal got can decide to assassinate its own citizens
wtf happened to the laws? habeus corpus and due process? everything else that is supposed to protect us from tyrannical govt programs like this
make no mistake, this program is far more likely to be seen in authoritarian countries than one such as ours which is supposed to uphold liberty and democracy
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He should authorize it for that crazy westboro church wench.
Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and due process, Washington attacked the enemy off the battlefield using guerrilla warfare tactics. Roosevelt did denies due process with Japanese citizens. If the enemy doesn't respect any rules, then how can a war be won without breaking some rules?
There is actually a grey area in the constitution that the courts have never resolved. The constitution makes the president 'commander in chief', but it doesn't put any limits on how he can fight a war. The courts never stopped Lincoln, so the constitution may permit the president to do whatever he pleases if this is how he chooses to fight a war.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Yea, I don't find it pleasant, but I'm not sure what else we are supposed to do. If a U.S. citizen becomes an enemy of the state, is it illegal to kill them in battle (or with a missile from a drone) without a trial?
The danger is, of course, that this authority could be abused to sanction political killing. The other side of the argument is that without the authority to take these actions you limit yourself to non-lethal methods for any American citizen engaged in conflict with the government.
Personal opinion: As long as there is oversight from non-executive branch sources I don't have any problem with it.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
well referring to the courts is ridiculous, the courts have rarely been a friend of the people, they almost always side with big govt
you seem to be making the two wrongs make a right argument, since lincoln and roosevelt did it therefore its okay, just and permissible?
the constitution does not give the president power to do whatever he wants, thats as clear as day, despite whatever the courts say, the president just cant go about taking away rights just because he wants to, its a non-sense argument and makes me suspicious of anyone who makes it
lincoln was a tyrant and so was FDR, and despite the conventional wisdom that they were great presidents i would respectfully disagree, and emphatically so
the problem is, the person can be assassinated even if they arent in the field of battle, he could be killed while hes sleeping in his own bed
and oversight is a joke, please
there shouldnt be oversight because the president shouldnt have this power, period end of story
You don't believe the president should have people killed without due process?
You must be with Al qaeda. Either that or you hate black people. Whichever one it is I'm reporting you to the De-fuck-ment of Home-cock Suck-curity!
edit:
or the Fuck-partment of Cock-land Suck-curity!
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or the Shit-partment of Dick-land Suck-curity!
edit edit edit:
or the Fist-partment of Cunt-land Stretch-curity!
edit edit edit edit:
or the Ass-partment of Shit-land Eat-curity!
edit edit edit edit edit:
or the Ass-fuck-ment of Butt-land Shit-curity!
that's the last one.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
If oversight is a joke then whether or not the president can do this legally is irrelevant. Just sayin'.
"Faith, Faith is an island in the setting sun,
but proof, proof is the bottom line for everyone."
Proof, Paul Simon
Nothing this hard should taste so beefy.
oversight is a joke because wtf are they going to oversee?
the fact is thereshouldnt even need to be oversight because the president doesnt have the power to assassinate anyone he wishes
the fact of its legality is totally different than if there should be oversight after the fact, if i argue for oversight im conceding the larger issue and dealing with minutia
I see your point.
"Faith, Faith is an island in the setting sun,
but proof, proof is the bottom line for everyone."
Proof, Paul Simon
Nothing this hard should taste so beefy.
So, they shouldn't kill Americans. Well, can they still indiscriminately shoot journalists and children?
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
Look fellas, I don't want to make you nervous but this video was leaked by whistle blowers in the Pentagon. By watching it you may come under suspicion by the Douche-partment of Cunt-land Vag-curity.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
Agreed. But they won their wars. So pick your poison. I'll take the one where I don't die.
We are fighting a bunch of SOBs, so the president better be a bit of a SOB and be willing to do whatever it takes to win. If a terrorist has a nuke in your neighborhood, what do you want him to do? Do you want to be ruled by insane Islamic fundamentalist that will stop at nothing to force their religion on populations?
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
You know what else would be scary? If instead of having a nuke the terrorists took control of your xbox and started making the games they wanted to play. Switching the buttons around and shit, making all the instruction booklets in Arabic. Then who knows what.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
(Sigh!) Clutch the pearls!
"Faith, Faith is an island in the setting sun,
but proof, proof is the bottom line for everyone."
Proof, Paul Simon
Nothing this hard should taste so beefy.
OK, so Obama is now asserting that he has the right to decide who lives and who dies. And unsurprisingly, everyone has an opinion on the matter. However, what I am seeing in this thread is mostly one liner opinions that just give a thumbs up or thumbs down on the matter. I think this deserves a rather more comprehensive treatment. So here comes a wall of text. I will do my best to keep it easy to read but it will get complicated in some places.
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The question at hand is if it is a presidential power to decide if someone ought to die. However, in consideration of this, it merits an understanding of what actually is a presidential power.
Broadly speaking, they fall into three categories.
The first is those powers specifically granted in the constitution. There are not very many of those. A typical example would be the rules on how a president may veto a bill which is passed up to him. Another is the power to pardon or commute the sentence of a person convicted of a Federal Crime.
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The second is those powers which have been granted to the president through legislation. There are quite a few of these. One example is the power to regulate all navigable waterway (although this is a contentious one as the concept of a navigable waterway has never been clearly defined.
Clinton made a minor 5 minute media splash when he wanted a photo-op of him in a canoe on some rapids. Since the Secret Service gets ants in the pants over anything dangerous, real white water was out of the question, so he used his ill defined power to order a dam to be opened at the wrong time of year so that he could get some white cap action on a straight and obstruction free bit of river.
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Neither of the first two categories are applicable on this question as they are things that are pre-written. What is relevant is the third category, known as executive privilege. This is those things that have never been written down but are asserted by a sitting president.
Such powers being the stuff of “what I want to do” are subject to the usual checks and balances from both the courts and congress. If a sitting president says that he can do something, then he pretty much can and it generally takes a good bit of time to stop him.
An example here comes from the appointment of federal officials. The president has the responsibility to appoint thousand of people to fill various jobs. Many (but nowhere near all of them) are subject to the advice and consent of the Senate.
However, even where the Senate is to be explicitly involved, the President has typically invoked the executive privilege to make a temporary appointment if a spot comes to be open when the Senate stands in recess. Generally, this is done to get some fairly unpopular person into a position. If the president times this right, by the time the Senate can do anything about it, the appointment may have become set in stone on other grounds.
W. did this when he appointed John Bolton to the UN ambassadorship.
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Remembering that this is in the legal category of “the president can do it until he is called on it”, then yes, he has the power to do it until it is stripped of him. One hopes that the courts or congress acts before anyone actually dies.
That much being said, yes, this is highly disturbing.
Oversight? Don't make me laugh. There is no such thing as oversight on executive privilege or at least not until after the fact. If one were to make an argument that he legally ought to have this power, then nobody can second guess him before the killing takes place. If the argument is that he should not have this power, then it still does not matter because it cannot be reviewed until after someone is dead.
Also, once someone is dead, executive power or not, there is the question of whether the person really was such an enemy of the state as to merit a non-judicial execution. Then too, we would have to know that it had happened to review the matter. Remember that presidents are generally allowed to use executive privilege to keep matters of national security away from oversight. Even the congress often cannot break through that wall.
If he really wants to do this, then he needs to be very careful. If he kills someone, then there could be a call for him to be impeached under a charge of murder and conspiracy to murder. I doubt that that question, if raised, will split right down party lines.
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This is under his power as commander and chief. There is a 'War on terror' authorized by congress and these citizens are supposed to be on the 'other' side and so are legally considered enemy combatants. As far as I know that is the justification.
I'm not sure how you get designated as an enemy combatant though, that might be arbitrary.
And like others have said, if you don't trust oversight then the whole thing is screwed anyway.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
Well, I understand what you are saying. It makes great sense. However, there are legal technicalities that need to be considered here.
As the commander in Chief, Obama is bound to the treaties of the Hague. As such, he is the forward representative of the US military. If he is not bound over by those documents, then the rest of the US military is not either. The laws of war are now void.
Not a good position in terms of international law.
Further, he is bound by the matter to send his revocation to the Hague and he is legally forbidden to act for one year. If he acts sooner than that, then he has violated the conventions and the laws of war are dead as a doornail.
Again, not a good thing to do.
However, if he does this under the unstated executive powers, then he is in a very different position.
Here the constitutional provision for impeachment comes into play. He may be impeached on one of two grounds. The constitutional argument is if he commits a high crime or misdemeanor. Technically speaking, a parking ticket is an impeachable offense but we all know what the deal is on that.
What matters to this is if he is commits an act of “conspiracy to commit murder”. This will be a huge problem if it comes to pass. As I said before, a clear felony is not going to split on party lines.
The second ground is not in the Constitution so is not exactly subject to legal purview. Even so, it has legal currency. When Bill Clinton wagged his finger at the American public and stated that he had not had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, he was lying. At that moment, everyone who has ever been in a locker room knew that he was saying that blow jobs don't count as sex.
Here is the legal point on which this turns:
So yah, the whole “blow jobs don't count as sex” thing was grounds enough to impeach Bill Clinton.
I will disclose here: I am a conservative republican and a tea party member. I am not really happy with Obama but general public discourse will deal with stuff.
However, asserting executive privilege to order non-judicial executions is going to be a huge problem for him. Alternatively, if he gets away with it, it becomes a huge problem for everyone.
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Just a heads up... concealed as a question: Can you name but one country in this world which is more authoritarian than the US of A?
(As the old adage goes: Power corrupts, and total power corrupts in a total way.)
As for Mr. Obama, he has been a major disappointment - which I fear will only get worse - and handing him the Nobel Peace Prize must be the biggest joke in modern political history. "Change", my arse... The only positive thing anyone can say is that his being in power at the very least makes it unlikely that we shall have to live with a "President Palin" anytime soon.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
Please tell me that was not a sincere question and that you can think of a number of more authoritarian countries easily.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
Not anyone who are "players" on the world scene, no. But inwardly, towards their own population, yes certainly!
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
How do you define, "Players"? You could make an argument that most of Europe is more authoritarian than the U.S. depending on how you define authoritarian. Or China? Or Russia? Or Singapore? Or Iran? Or....
Maybe you should define authoritarian in your own words so I know what you are talking about. I'm not nationalistic about the U.S.A at all, but I don't see how you could justify America as the most authoritarian first world nation unless you use a not standard definition.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
Authoritarian = Assuming "authority" through whatever diverse means and thus claiming "leadership" with or without consent.
Apart from that, I quite agree with Wikipedia: "Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is opposed to individualism and democracy. In politics, an authoritarian government is one in which political power is concentrated in a leader or leaders, typically unelected, who possess exclusive, unaccountable, and arbitrary power."
In order to grasp my point, one might however want to consider whether the political power lies with "the government" or somewhere else, say for instance with private or corporate interests that are unaccountable.
"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)
http://www.kinkspace.com
Wikileak = Utter bullshit
Try this link:
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/201985.php
First casualty of war is the truth.
How can not believing in something that is backed up with no empirical evidence be less scientific than believing in something that not only has no empirical evidence but actually goes against the laws of the universe and in many cases actually contradicts itself? - Ricky Gervais
I don't click on off-site links but your argument is rather compelling.
Oh, I know this one. China.
China is determined to make sure that the source of most of their petroleum is not affected that they will cock block the whole damned United Nations Security Council until there is a new mushroom cloud.
When that happens, the tune will change to “The USA needs us as economic partners or the whole world economy will collapse. So we are automatically correct”.
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israel is more authoritarian, iran most certainly (you may say they arent a player but they are getting huge attention right now), north korea (same as iran though maybe not as much attention)
lotsa places
though that isnt a point in the US's favor, its like saying your the skinniest kid at fat camp
So can you show why the US is more authoritarian, by your standards, than the listed examples? I'm just curious because I'm not getting it. Authoritarianism is about the state controlling the individual, and I just don't see the US as the most heavy-handed user of the tactic, just the most powerful.
If you are saying authoritarian as applied to international relations, your definition is somewhat novel and you could probably use a different word, for teh sake of clarity.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.