Speaking today at Northwestern University, Attorney General Eric Holder insisted that the president has an absolute right under the context of the “war on terror” to order the assassination of American citizens overseas saying that the nature of a war against a “stateless enemy” meant that assassinations could happen anywhere.
Insisting that such killings are “legal and constitutional,” Holder also said that President Obama’s decision to assassinate an American citizen in and of itself amounted to “due process,” and that courts are entirely unnecessary.
Holder went on to spurn human rights groups for suggesting that assassinations were only acceptable in the case of “imminent threat,” saying that there is no requirement in the Constitution to wait until “some theoretical end-stage of planning” and that killings could happen before the “time, place and manner of an attack become clear.”
Though officials had presented Holder’s speech ahead of time as a final word on killings, he left much of the debate entirely unaddressed, not even touching on the standard for which a citizen could be assassinated and simply insisting that when the president decides to do so we should assume it was for a really good reason.
Don't you know? Haven't they told you since Nixon at least? "When a President does it, it's legal."
"In this hour of danger…" what a laugh!
What keeps playing in my head since I read Holder's cheap melodramatic phrase is that song from Evita's boyfriend before she became Eva Peron –
"On this night of a thousand stars, let me take you to heaven's door."
It is the insistent beat of tyranny.
People have been dragged out of comfy government buildings and strung up on rafters for things like that.
"Stateless enemy…"? Damn if that's not about vague. Might that be anything like a faceless nobody?
It's the new carte blanche for everything. A generalized, fictitious bogeyman you pull out to scare people into cheering your crimes. That Constitution thing is preventing us from protecting you from those bad people out there trying to kill you. Well then you just get rid of that damned Constitution thing, Eric! Keep us safe from the unspecified stateless evil doers only you can identify!!
I feel safer already. What's that droning noise………….
the 3 steps of due process
1)ready
2)aim
3)fire
Does that mean Obama could order Holder's assassination? Say by drone as he drove to Annapolis with his family?
I guess so. Welcome to 1984, where former slave material is empowered to enslave other brown people and murder their children — all the while wearing nice white boy smiles. This country is run by country club Nazis.
The thing all this "lose" talk gets me to wonderin…. is …..If the GOV can murder US with no process whatsoever for anything at all. Are WE allowed to murder those in GOV who murder the constitution and SELL our right to foreign interests… for PAC campaign cash…??? Just Checkin……
So we now officially live in a Dictatorship. Thanks for the clarification Holder…
And do they know that this is EXACTLY the justification for killing citizens in Syria, Libya, Saudi, etc. without legal review – "We live in dangerous times and need to eliminate enemies of the 'people'". Congrats all, we can claim to float atop the cesspool.
Because the Obamanator considered it, that is due process? Really? So now the American President is Judge Dread? Tell ya what Holder…If you and PBO PERSONALLY pull the trigger, I might entertain this argument. Until then, this is decidedly NOT due process, you you have just become the enemy of the state.
Judge Dredd: "I am the law!"
Louis XIV: "I am the State!"
Barack Obama: "I am Change!"
There is little or nothing now that distinguishes the U.S. from the various banana republic dictatorships throughout the world. "Free country" my ass!
Like Carl above, I'm assuming that if Holder found out he was on the hit list he'd be perfectly okay with that since, after all, Our Dear Leader knows best about who should live or die.
I suppose also that if Obama is deposed in the next election, the incoming President could order his assassination and Michelle and the kids would be fine with that since, after all, Our New Dear Leader would know best as well, right?
I'm sure Santorum and Romney would be all gung-ho knowing they were on Obama's hit list as well, right? Come on, guys, Obama's just doing what you're gong to do when one of you gets elected, right?
Do you suppose Bush and Cheney would sleep well if they found they were targeted by the Obama Gestapo? How could they possibly complain, since their deaths would be all for the good of the nation… right?
Welcome to the cesspool known as the USSA. What branch of Knuckle Draggers is he referring to when he talks about Our Values. Must be the New Orleans Saints.This country hits a new low every day and guess who is responsible for that ? Yup, you and I because we let it happen. Time to step up and reclaim our personal power and be responsible for our kids future NEH ???
A stateless enemy is a person without state, Do not all terrorists carry some states Passport.
Furthermore the President ONLY has war Powers WHEN a State of War has been Declared by the United States Congress, that hasnt been done since WWII, 1943 If I remember rightly against Thailand!
I believe they're using the DAFT Act (Defense Against Future Terrorism Act) put in place after 911 that says "… any and all means …" may be used. I didn't like it then ans I absolutely hate it now. These things always, eventually, get pushed to their extreme.
Actually, the Congress has agreed (and the courts have not been asked, I think) that if THEY give the Executive branch the AUTHORITY to wage a nebulous and loosely defined and proscribed war (without actually declaring a State of War – because that would make THEM responsible) then a Constitutionally required Declaration of War is not necessary. And the American people generally acquiesced in silence because, after all, our Legislators know what is best for us, dontcha know. I mean, it's just so much work for our elected to actually sit down and craft a Declaration of War – might take time away from writing legislation changing the name of French Fries to Liberty Fries.( I hope that clown is ONLY remembered for that bit of legislative history.)
In the eyes of our government masters we are all terrorists or potential terrorists.
I'm now very afraid… does that make Eric Holder a terrorist.
Did anyone in the crowd have the balls to take this evil cretin to task over this? Where are the gallows?
Eric Holder, like everyone else in O-Bomb’a’s administration, is nothing but a fascist scumbag.
Piss on him.
It must be a heady feeling, declaring yourself a god with the power of death at your fingertips. Guess what, though? You can kill as many as you want, but you will never ever have the power of creation. I guess our modern-day Pharaoh isn't all he thinks he is.
Go ahead and drop those cross hairs on a few more American citizens, Obama, and you'd better pray your assassins don't kill the wrong person. What comes around goes around, and you won't be President forever.
,If Bush had done this there would have been outrage; but now that it's Mr Hope there is sudden silence by the likes of Maddow, Schultz, Olberman,and that bunch. Dictatorship is power unrestrained by the rule of law and by that definition the United States has become a dictatorhip no matter how it is packaged in the language of democracy. And with both sides accepting an unrestrained imperial president, and perpetual war does it really matter if the next dictator is an elected one? Add to this that the electorate had a choice in Ron Paul and appears to have rejected this opportunity for real change, the country seems to be comfortable with the Nixonian concept of power.
That's exactly Syria's policy.
This must be a nightmare I'm having, Holder saying it's ok to kill Americans and America is a Police State. Why can't I wake up?
In America, whenever courts became 'unnecessary' or absent, the subsequent 'vigilante justice' sometimes resulted in lynching. Being black, one would think that Mssrs Holder and Obama might be somewhat sensitive to the abnegation of civil rights. Even for the best of intentions, the fallout often lands on the least in society..
Obama+Holder once again have proven themselves to be both unequivocally first degree morons as well as the most evil manifestations of unintelligent fawning corporate slime with patently fascistic vision of state. Despite their respective 'legal education' and Obama's arrogant and pretentious posture as a 'Constitutional scholar' neither seems to have comprehended that due process is the legal requirement that the state must respect all of the legal rights that are owed to a human being, citizen or non-citizen which are guaranteed in the 14th amendment to the US constitution. Process is defined as 'procedural', that is to say, accusation, warrant, arrest, trial and either conviction or dismissal, with the defendant free from self-incrimination through torture. Firing an explosively charged missile from a remotely controlled aerial vehicle towards an assumed or presumedly guilty party anywhere on the globe is a vile and cowardly misappropriation of power which in no way can be interpreted as due process. Holder's defence calls for accountability and impeachment proceedings which should be initiated directly against both of these loathe-some and incompetent individuals. Obama, Clinton and Holder are Bush Cheney and Yoo writ large!
Thank you for saying it so well. I totally subscribe.
At this rate in a sane world Russia and China can arguably state that they are more "democratic" as well as a more civilized country than the "land of the free and the home of the brave".
so by the same token, Iran has the right to kill those who threaten it here and elsewhere in the same manner!!!!
Due process is, at its basic, the right to notice and the right to a hearing. A decison of the President acting in secret in the interests of national security is something, but it is not "due process" as commonly understood. Holder is only hiding sins under a cloak of respectability that I hope a court or law or the court of public opinion will take away.
Not only that, as I have read his statements, it seems that the underlying thought process behind the singling out of bad guys before they have done anything, before there is evidence that they will do something, but based on suspicion, derives from the illegal (under our Constitution, though not under England's) "writs of attainder" which made a person an outlaw not because of due process, but at the whim of the king. Our President is in some ways a temporary king, or so he is viewed by British people, although that is a foreign view for Americans. But taking the position currently in the so-called GWOT may be acceptable to our allies in Europe and in Britain, but frankly, it violates basic principles, perhaps unique to the United States of America. We broke with monarchy, and now we are inviting it back in for "security."
Good Good…holder, when an empire starts to crumble, it begins almost right there, where you keep explaining the 'legal and 'constitutional'
Not only is assassinating Americans ‘Legal and Constitutional’ but also arming, training and funding drug cartels and laundering their profits is as legal and constitutional.
So if courts are completely unnecessary, what use is an attorney-general?
Constitutional? Whatever happened to the "life" part of "life, liberty, pursuit of happiness"?
PS: Perhaps I shouldn't be so critical. I'm a Canadian. So I should be asking: Whatever happened to the "good government" part of "peace, order, and good government."
I'm really sorry to see a younger generation growing up hearing this kind of stuff. There is no counterbalance to the action movies and videos. They are being taught that this is our legal reality. You can blow away people who threaten you. This to me says that whatever strength we once had to order the world, to create the time for process, has vanished.
I have to say that Obama's press conference today was a masterful display of swordsmanship. But nobody asked a thing about Holder. Rush Limbaugh seemed more the plat du jour, swine with a side of horseradish mustard.
Does the phrase "Writ of Attainder" ring a bell? This sounds like it because Holder asserts that someone can be targeted before it becomes clear whatever crime he intends to commit. He becomes an "outlaw" due to his statements or associates, and can be killed, not just arrested.
Trading "Writ of Habeas Corpus" for a "Writ of Attainder", is what has been done. And it extends to the blood, creating a blood taint with it. First it was done on Saddam and his sons by Bush. Then it was done al Awlaki and his son. This is what the founders warned about.
Playing these attainder games was how the kings of England held power – they moved nobles in and out of favor at will.
Just because we are ignorant of the road we have gone down before, just because Holder appears equally ignorant, does not mean the road isn't there and well-marked too with the decapitated heads of men who ran afoul of royal authority, displayed on pikes.
Send not then to know for whom the bell tolls…
Sounds like Eric is saying that if the president designates someone an enemy in the war on terror and if they live overseas then they are more or less given a status of stateless. Stateless means that they are the citizen of no nation ( ie deprived of their US citizenship) so no need for US due process given that they are not even US citizens. Then he goes on the say that the president is due process all by himself.
Vance v. Terrazas, 444 U.S. 252 (1980) — was decided by the Supreme Court, the U.S. government continued to hold to the view that intentionally performing an action which Congress had designated as "expatriating" could be interpreted as clear evidence of the type of consent to relinquish U.S. citizenship mandated by the Afroyim decision.[17]
So removing citizenship is consistent with concent idea, but does that lead to the conclusion that someone can more or less arbitrarily made stateless and then executed outside of the justice system. Seems like the supreme court might have something to add to this discussion. Even if no one would question the president having that kind of power in a real all out war, should he have it in a pansy war, like the war on terror, perhaps he should also have it in the the war on drugs, or the war on crime, or the war on poverty?
And then he says "anywhere" ie the US,
Is New York Yankey stadium drone stike anywhere?
Where does Eric's thinking end?