Photo Credit: ryanjreilly Creative Commons
Can the president kill an American simply because the person is dangerous and his arrest would be impractical? Can the president be judge, jury and executioner of an American in a foreign country because he believes that would keep America safe? Can Congress authorize the president to do this?
Earlier this week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder attempted to justify presidential killing in a speech at Northwestern University law school. In it, he recognized the requirement of the Fifth Amendment for due process. He argued that the president may substitute the traditionally understood due process — a public jury trial — with the president’s own novel version of it; that would be a secret deliberation about killing. Without mentioning the name of the American the president recently ordered killed, Holder suggested that the president’s careful consideration of the case of New Mexico-born Anwar al-Awlaki constituted a substituted form of due process.
Holder argued that the act of reviewing al-Awlaki’s alleged crimes, what he was doing in Yemen and the imminent danger he posed provided al-Awlaki with a substituted form of due process. He did not mention how this substitution applied to al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son and a family friend, who were also executed by CIA drones. And he did not address the utter absence of any support in the Constitution or Supreme Court case law for his novel theory.
The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution states that the government may not take the life, liberty or property of any person without due process. Due process has numerous components, too numerous to address here, but the essence of it is “substantive fairness” and a “settled fair procedure.” Under due process, when the government wants your life, liberty or property, the government must show that it is entitled to what it seeks by articulating the law it says you have violated and then proving its case in public to a neutral jury. And you may enjoy all the constitutional protections to defend yourself. Without the requirement of due process, nothing would prevent the government from taking anything it coveted or killing anyone — American or foreign — it hated or feared.
The killing of al-Awlaki and the others was without any due process whatsoever, and that should terrify all Americans. The federal government has not claimed the lawful power to kill Americans without due process since the Civil War; even then, the power to kill was claimed only in actual combat.
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I can’t understand why the media won’t do some thing about this ! When is everyone going to wake up !?!!?!
When we are all behind bars ?
First, the “media” has been overrun with people who are trained and steeped in thinking born over the last 100 years from the likes of Karl Marx through the auspices, strategies and tactics of Critical Theory. Study it out.
The purpose of such is the destruction of the institutions of the United States as they were formed at our founding. The fact that our “Founders” were not perfect (e.g. slavery, Jim Crow and other matters) has always presented an open door for “criticism”, which is the tool of doubt, which leads to unbelief, which leads to a change of heart and mind from believing that which is right, good, honorable and virtuous to something that is not.
Therefore, the “media” that you are believing to be the “watchdog” of government, has become duplicitous and complicit in the affair and matter of the destruction of the founding principles of this nation. That Critical Theory is born of the likes of Karl Marx, Engels and others, and that this thinking has become the banner cry of “progressives” and “liberals” to which the media makes no hidden bones about being given to in heart and mind, ought to tell you the answer to the angst you expressed in your comment!
The “I don’t understand why” frustration held by so many normal and everyday American’s is precisely this lack of understanding of the source of the attack on this nation. The “halls of power” in this nation (e.g. government, business, education and — yes — even religion) have become corrupted with the thinking stemming from the seeds planted from said sources: Marx, Engels, et al. The really sad part is how these folks are sincere in what they believe. They are sincere in what they see as reasoned and rational beliefs and think they are doing good and right by themselves and others.
So — it is high time to become educated as a nation with what patriots remain to push back by pointing out and exposing the source of the twisted logic standing firmly behind the thinking of these “well meaning” people. Guns and violence will NOT change or alter this matter. This is about spirit and thought, about reasoning and goodness. Thus, the solution and answer is in understanding the heart-issue and thought-cancer, where it comes from, how it works and exposing it to those infected in hopes they will choose to turn from it before it so consumes them and us to where we are defenseless and lose our capacity to be the nation the Lord culled out of the inhabitants of the earth to make America what it was and still can be.
I pray you all take this message to heart and — more importantly — take this message to the hearts and minds of your families, neighbors, churches, work, governments (local) and everyone you meet.
There was absolutely no due process applied to the decision to murder this US Citizen. It was only premised upon the judgment of the perpetrators of this 1st Degree Homicide!!!!
Those B******S in DC have lost their minds totally!!
If a gangster tells one of his flunkies to go kill someone, then the godfather is as guilty of murder as the guy who pulls the trigger. My only question is why isn’t Obama guilty of murder? I don’t hold the soldier(s) who pulled the trigger so to speak, responsible, they were following orders and probably didn’t even know who they were taking out, but it’s pretty clear that resident (I refuse to use the “P” word for him) and his accomplices knew full well who they were ordering killed. They obviously didn’t care. “a substituted form of due process”? What the hell does that mean? I guess it’s like the substituted form of fair elections they want too.
After the constitutional convention of 1787 Ben Franklin was asked “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.” I dare say America better wake up, because we’re just about to lose it.