May 06 2010

For Your Consideration: Which Would You Prefer

(9 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

This morning Glen Greenwald posed this hypothetical question regarding the outrage over Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s citizenship stripping bill and President Barak Obama’s assassination policy:

Outrage over Lieberman’s citizen-stripping bill is odd in light of Obama’s assassination program: which would you rather have done to you?

Neither Lieberman’s bill or Obama’s Policy provide for due process.

Hopefully, Lieberman’s bill stands no chance getting even to the Senate floor but President Obama’s assassination policy is already in place.

Do either of these men, who have sworn to uphold the law and protect the Constitution, believe in its core principles?

16 comments

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    • TMC on May 6, 2010 at 16:00
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    and the rule of law which our highest elected government officials continue to shred.

  2. 9/14/2001 is when congress gave the executive branch it’s OK to render the constitution irrelevant.

    The president as judge, jury, executioner.

    The font of this extraordinary authority is a congressional resolution passed just three days after the 9/11 attacks. It says, “The president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

    Just as President Bush said the 9/14 resolution gave him the wartime powers to detain, interrogate, capture, and kill terrorists all over the world, so too does President Obama. On March 13, 2009 Justice Department lawyers said in a Habeas brief before the D.C. Federal Court that this resolution,  known as the AUMF, or authorization of the use of military force, granted the administration detention authority.

    http://reason.com/archives/201…

    • Edger on May 6, 2010 at 20:45
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    republicans to win, huh? 😉

    Your link is broken btw, TMC…

  4. …. citizenship rights from anybody when he is the epitome of the panderer to whichever politician or party is in power ?  Where’s his loyalty? What wouldn’t he do, unchecked by those who still try to follow some Constitutional document?

    This is what is wrong with the current DC DNC/OFA Beltway branch of the Democratic Party. Instead of asking questions like that, their immediate response is to placate, chide everyone to be more civil and polite to the lunatic,  and figure out what sort of offering they must make to appease him.  Like perhaps we should all be outfitted with new national identity cards with biometric markers so Homeland Security (remember he chairs that committee) can monitor all of us for pure political thoughts.  

  5. Whenever Lieberman said something I attributed it to his Manchurian Candidate mind controlling microchip.  That however would be to advance the agenda of some corporate organization, you know something which had a stance on something for profit.  Lacking rational support of that thesis on anything Lieberman says I shall go for the esoteric possesion by a high placed minion of Satan thesis.

  6. I didn’t know we had a Constitution anymore.  I thought Bush cremated it and cast the ashes into the Gulf Stream, round up, gmo corn & soy, and scattered the rest to the 4 Winds.

  7. will speak loudly their cowardice, and other men will call it courage,

    Will react to fear and call it strength,

    And will enact depravity, and call it morality.

  8. Although I am fairly certain under Joe Lieberman’s (I – Insane) model, most of DC and all of Wall Street should be stripped of citizenship and shipped off to Gitmo as terrorists against the American People and our security… then Obama’s (D – Duplicitous) drones could bomb it.

  9. …. this morning.

    http://dyn.politico.com/member…

    “what Constitution?”

    Glen Greenwald on Kagan

    http://www.salon.com/news/opin…

    The *****f*cking Salon site must have been anticipating this and has a pop up ad I can’t effing close to see the window, so I went to google cache.  



    As Katyal noted, Kagan relied upon the warning from Alexander Hamilton about a “feeble executive” that was beloved by Bush/Cheney legal theorists, and she hailed “strong, executive vigor.”  On the legal spectrum, Kagan clearly sits on the end of strong assertions of executive authority — perhaps on the far end, almost certainly much further than where Stevens falls.  It’s perhaps unsurprising that a President — such as Barack Obama — would want someone on the Supreme Court who is quite deferential to executive authority.  But given that so many of the most important legal and Constitutional disputes center on the proper limits of executive power (including ones that remain to be decided from the Bush era), and that Kagan and her rulings will likely long outlast an Obama presidency (i.e., any pro-executive-power decisions she issues will apply to future George Bushes and Dick Cheneys), shouldn’t these pro-executive-power views, by themselves, prompt serious reservations (if not outright opposition) among progressives?



    Graham:

    Do you believe we are at war?

    Kagan:

    I do, Senator.


    I have never, and neither has anyone else, heard mention of the actual names of her parents in any online bio.  Something is damned weird about this whole thing.  

    • TMC on May 7, 2010 at 16:24
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    He hammers her sparse record:

    First, given that there are so many excellent candidates who have a long, clear commitment to a progressive judicial philosophy, why would Obama possibly select someone who — at best — is a huge question mark, and who could easily end up as the Democrats’ version of the Bush-41-appointed David Souter, i.e., someone about whom little is known and ends up for decades embracing a judicial philosophy that is the exact opposite of the one the President’s party supports?

    snip

    Second, I believe Kagan’s absolute silence over the past decade on the most intense Constitutional controversies speaks very poorly of her.  Many progressives argued (and I certainly agree) that the Bush/Cheney governing template was not merely wrong, but a grave threat to our political system and the rule of law.  It’s not hyperbole to say that it spawned a profound Constitutional crisis.

    And he calls this a red flag

    Among the most disturbing aspects is her testimony during her Solicitor General confirmation hearing, where she agreed wholeheartedly with Lindsey Graham about the rightness of the core Bush/Cheney Terrorism template:  namely, that the entire world is a “battlefield,” that “war” is the proper legal framework for analyzing all matters relating to Terrorism, and the Government can therefore indefinitely detain anyone captured on that “battlefield” (i.e., anywhere in the world without geographical limits) who is accused (but not proven) to be an “enemy combatant.”

    Considering that Obama chose someone with such a right wing ideology and her hearing testimony, she should have no problem getting confirmed.

  11. Silly question.  The obvious answer is NO, they don’t.

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