deadfish
02-22-2013, 05:52 PM
Glenn Greenwald is possibly my favorite journalist, although I like Matt Welch a lot too. Don't forget to check for Glenn's responses in the comments, he doesn't hold back when responding. one of the reasons I enjoy following him.
Obama officials refuse to say if assassination power extends to US soil (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/22/obama-brennan-paul-assassinations-filibuster)
The administration's extreme secrecy is beginning to lead Senators to impede John Brennan's nomination to lead the CIA
Friday 22 February 2013
The Justice Department "white paper" purporting to authorize Obama's power to extrajudicially execute US citizens was leaked three weeks ago. Since then, the administration - including the president himself and his nominee to lead the CIA, John Brennan - has been repeatedly asked whether this authority extends to US soil, i.e., whether the president has the right to execute US citizens on US soil without charges. In each instance, they have refused to answer.
Brennan has been asked the question several times as part of his confirmation process. Each time, he simply pretends that the question has not been asked, opting instead to address a completely different issue. Here's the latest example from the written exchange he had with Senators after his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee; after referencing the DOJ "white paper", the Committee raised the question with Brennan in the most straightforward way possible: ...
As always, it's really worth pausing to remind ourselves of how truly radical and just plainly unbelievable this all is. What's more extraordinary: that the US Senate is repeatedly asking the Obama White House whether the president has the power to secretly order US citizens on US soil executed without charges or due process, or whether the president and his administration refuse to answer? That this is the "controversy" surrounding the confirmation of the CIA director - and it's a very muted controversy at that - shows just how extreme the degradation of US political culture is. ... Read More (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/22/obama-brennan-paul-assassinations-filibuster)
DOJ kill list memo forces many Dems out of the closet as overtly unprincipled hacks (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/11/progressives-defend-obama-kill-list)
Last week's controversy over Obama's assassination program forced into light many ignored truths that were long obvious
But the most significant factor was the behavior of many Democratic pundits and self-proclaimed progressives. Given how glaring all the assembled evidence was of Obama's dangerous radicalism, they faced a serious dilemma: how to fulfill their core purpose - defending Obama no matter what he does - while maintaining a modicum of dignity and intellectual coherence?
Some of them, like MSNBC host Touré Neblett, invoked the language of John Yoo to outright defend Obama's assassination powers on the ground of presidential omnipotence: "he's the Commander in Chief", he intoned. But the explicit submission to presidential authority necessary to justify this was so uncomfortably similar to Bush-era theories, and the very suggestion that MSNBC commentators would be saying any of that if it had been Bush's program rather than Obama's was so laughable, that this approach provoked little beyond widespread ridicule.
A slightly different approach was chosen by the Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky, a supremely loyal Obama acolyte. He wrote a whole column devoted to pronouncing himself "suspicious of high-horse denunciations" because the question here is such "a complicated one". It's so "complicated", he says, because he's "always written about politics with part of [his] brain focused on the question of what [he] would do if [he] were in Politician X's position". ... Read More (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/11/progressives-defend-obama-kill-list)
Glenn Greenwald has a superb twitter feed (https://twitter.com/ggreenwald) as well
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
What's more bizarre: that Senators are asking the President if he can execute Americans on US soil w/o charges, or that he won't answer?
As great as these two paragraphs are from @ESQPolitics, the last 2 sentences are perfect on every level http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Outlaw_In_The_Oval?src=rss … [links to story below]
A Bad Idea Gets Worse (http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Outlaw_In_The_Oval)
This is what happens when you elect someone -- anyone -- to the presidency as that office is presently constituted. Of all the various Washington mystery cults, the one at that end of Pennsylvania Avenue is the most impenetrable. This is why the argument many liberals are making -- that the drone program is acceptable both morally and as a matter of practical politics because of the faith you have in the guy who happens to be presiding over it at the moment -- is criminally naive, intellectually empty, and as false as blue money to the future. The powers we have allowed to leach away from their constitutional points of origin into that office have created in the presidency a foul strain of outlawry that (worse) is now seen as the proper order of things. If that is the case, and I believe it is, then the very nature of the presidency of the United States at its core has become the vehicle for permanently unlawful behavior. Every four years, we elect a new criminal because that's become the precise job description. ...
Obama officials refuse to say if assassination power extends to US soil (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/22/obama-brennan-paul-assassinations-filibuster)
The administration's extreme secrecy is beginning to lead Senators to impede John Brennan's nomination to lead the CIA
Friday 22 February 2013
The Justice Department "white paper" purporting to authorize Obama's power to extrajudicially execute US citizens was leaked three weeks ago. Since then, the administration - including the president himself and his nominee to lead the CIA, John Brennan - has been repeatedly asked whether this authority extends to US soil, i.e., whether the president has the right to execute US citizens on US soil without charges. In each instance, they have refused to answer.
Brennan has been asked the question several times as part of his confirmation process. Each time, he simply pretends that the question has not been asked, opting instead to address a completely different issue. Here's the latest example from the written exchange he had with Senators after his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee; after referencing the DOJ "white paper", the Committee raised the question with Brennan in the most straightforward way possible: ...
As always, it's really worth pausing to remind ourselves of how truly radical and just plainly unbelievable this all is. What's more extraordinary: that the US Senate is repeatedly asking the Obama White House whether the president has the power to secretly order US citizens on US soil executed without charges or due process, or whether the president and his administration refuse to answer? That this is the "controversy" surrounding the confirmation of the CIA director - and it's a very muted controversy at that - shows just how extreme the degradation of US political culture is. ... Read More (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/22/obama-brennan-paul-assassinations-filibuster)
DOJ kill list memo forces many Dems out of the closet as overtly unprincipled hacks (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/11/progressives-defend-obama-kill-list)
Last week's controversy over Obama's assassination program forced into light many ignored truths that were long obvious
But the most significant factor was the behavior of many Democratic pundits and self-proclaimed progressives. Given how glaring all the assembled evidence was of Obama's dangerous radicalism, they faced a serious dilemma: how to fulfill their core purpose - defending Obama no matter what he does - while maintaining a modicum of dignity and intellectual coherence?
Some of them, like MSNBC host Touré Neblett, invoked the language of John Yoo to outright defend Obama's assassination powers on the ground of presidential omnipotence: "he's the Commander in Chief", he intoned. But the explicit submission to presidential authority necessary to justify this was so uncomfortably similar to Bush-era theories, and the very suggestion that MSNBC commentators would be saying any of that if it had been Bush's program rather than Obama's was so laughable, that this approach provoked little beyond widespread ridicule.
A slightly different approach was chosen by the Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky, a supremely loyal Obama acolyte. He wrote a whole column devoted to pronouncing himself "suspicious of high-horse denunciations" because the question here is such "a complicated one". It's so "complicated", he says, because he's "always written about politics with part of [his] brain focused on the question of what [he] would do if [he] were in Politician X's position". ... Read More (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/11/progressives-defend-obama-kill-list)
Glenn Greenwald has a superb twitter feed (https://twitter.com/ggreenwald) as well
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
What's more bizarre: that Senators are asking the President if he can execute Americans on US soil w/o charges, or that he won't answer?
As great as these two paragraphs are from @ESQPolitics, the last 2 sentences are perfect on every level http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Outlaw_In_The_Oval?src=rss … [links to story below]
A Bad Idea Gets Worse (http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Outlaw_In_The_Oval)
This is what happens when you elect someone -- anyone -- to the presidency as that office is presently constituted. Of all the various Washington mystery cults, the one at that end of Pennsylvania Avenue is the most impenetrable. This is why the argument many liberals are making -- that the drone program is acceptable both morally and as a matter of practical politics because of the faith you have in the guy who happens to be presiding over it at the moment -- is criminally naive, intellectually empty, and as false as blue money to the future. The powers we have allowed to leach away from their constitutional points of origin into that office have created in the presidency a foul strain of outlawry that (worse) is now seen as the proper order of things. If that is the case, and I believe it is, then the very nature of the presidency of the United States at its core has become the vehicle for permanently unlawful behavior. Every four years, we elect a new criminal because that's become the precise job description. ...