Grassroots Central Updates

"President Barack Obama announced drastic changes to the United States’ counterterrorism operations today, reforming the rules that guide America’s drone program while also expediting the release of Guantanamo Bay detainees....

But although both the drone program and Guantanamo Bay have existed for more than a decade, calls for reform on both matters have increased severely in recent months as the number of civilian drone casualties soars. By many estimates, thousands of women, children and other innocent people have been killed during nearly a decade-long war dominated by drones. Meanwhile, Gitmo inmates — nearly all of them — remain committed to a hunger strike that has made the White House the object of international embarrassment and prompted them to start force-feeding prisoners.

“Mr. Obama will sharply curtail the instances when unmanned aircraft can be used to attack in places that are not overt war zones, countries like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia,” wrote Charlie Savage and Peter Baker for the New York Times. “The rules will impose the same standard for strikes on foreign enemies now used only for American citizens deemed to be terrorists.”

According to the Times writers, “Mr. Obama will also renew his long-stalled effort to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay” during Thursday’s address in Washington.

Savage, the Times’ Washington correspondent, broke the news earlier that day that US Attorney General Eric Holder wrote Congress to inform them that the president approved a document that “institutionalizes the administrations’ exacting standards and processes for reviewing and approving operations to capture or use lethal force against terrorist targets outside the United States and areas of active hostilities.” ...

Holder added that while the document approved recently by Obama remains classified, it largely stresses the importance of using drones as a last-ditch resort for taking out insurgents when capture is unreasonable and there is an immediate threat to the United States and its citizens.

“For circumstances in which capture is feasible, the policy outlines standards and procedures to ensure that operations to take into custody a terrorist suspect are conducted in accordance with all applicable law, including the laws of war. When capture is not feasible, the police provides that lethal force may be used only when a terrorist target poses a continuing, imminent threat to Americans, and when certain other preconditions, including a requirement that no other reasonable alternatives exist to effective address the threat, are satisfied.”

Elsewhere in the letter, Holder admitted officially for the first time that US drones have killed four American citizens abroad since 2009. The attorney general acknowledged, though, that only one of those victims was specifically targeted by the administration. "

more at link: http://rt.com/usa/holder-obama-us-drone-694/



more discussion of institutionalization of drone strikes here: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...-to-kill-lists

The U.S. has killed four American citizens in drone attacks, Attorney General Eric Holder told lawmakers in a letter made public Wednesday.

The letter comes the day before President Obama is slated to lay out his administration’s legal justification for using drones against terrorists in a speech at the National Defense University and represents the first time his administration has publicly acknowledged killing Americans with the use of drones.

Holder's letter states that the four Americans were killed in counter-terrorism operations and does not use the word drones.

It states that Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric, was targeted by the U.S. It has been widely reported that al-Awlaki was killed in a 2011 drone attack in Yemen.

http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill...#ixzz2U3enNgat

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBAODPATiA0

Great to see a high profile politician like the mayor of San Diego speaking out about your right to jury nullification to fight back against unjust laws. Hopefully more will follow!



http://reason.com/blog/2013/05/21/sa...-nullification
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/loca...208246501.html

Please help one of our own get elected as North Carolina GOP Vice Chairman. http://glenbradley.net/?pg=donate



Gunny needs funds to print an ad in the program, print handouts for the convention and travel to all 100 counties.
$10 from 500 supporters will get Liberty where it belongs, in the heart of the Republican party.

Who is Glen Bradley?


Glen Bradley speaking at End The Fed Charlotte Spring of 2012

Background

Glen Bradley has just completed his first term in the North Carolina State House of Representatives, he is a former candidate for the North Carolina State Senate, a former Franklin County Republican Party 1st Vice Chairman, volunteer for Ron Paul 2008 and 2012 Presidential Campaigns (Delegate to the 2012 RNC), a former US Marine, Cadet Deputy Commander of his High School AFJROTC, and Civil Air Patrol Cadet.

Defending your right to keep and bear arms:

To all who now hold office in the Great State of North Carolina, the people of North Carolina implore you to uphold and defend the right of the people to keep and bear arms:

Foundation: Constitutional Construction, Activism, Marine Corps
Glen Bradley's conviction in political activism is that America stands in the face of a deep crisis, and that it is fundamentally a Constitutional crisis. The overwhelming myriad of distinct problems faced by most of the people can now be solved by restoring the Constitutional order, more so right now than at any other time in American history we can rally every diverse American from every stripe and philosophy to agree to restore the original construction of the federal and state Constitutions.

Frederick Douglass taught that the best guarantee of human and civil liberties was the strict and equal enforcement of the US Constitution, and I remain convinced that he was correct. I knew innately from childhood that basically all of America's problems stemmed from deviations from the Constitutional authority, and the desire to swear an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution therefore was one of the primary motivations for my joining the US Marine Corps in 1992.

America is flinging herself apart at the seams, violently oscillating back and forth like a train that has come off the rails. The rails are the Constitution and we have become derailed, so America no longer functions correctly. The evidence is on the nightly news every day of the week. The solution is to put the train back on the rails, and those rails are the Constitution. Restore Constitutional compliance in all things -- even the parts we don't like -- and once America is back in order then we can come together as a nation to debate how to make things better.

http://glenbradley.net/?pg=donate

http://chooseliberty.org/nationalidc...aspx?pid=0516b

video here -> https://www.facebook.com/RepThomasMa...14055105285324

Special Order on Internet Sales Taxes

by Norm Singleton on MAY 13, 2013 in NATIONAL BLOG
Set your DVRs! This Wednesday, Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie will be giving a one-hour special order speech after Wednesday’s votes on why Members of Congress should oppose the “Marketplace Fairness Act” (more adeptly named the “National Internet Tax Mandate”). Other freshman members who also oppose the National Internet Tax Mandate will join Representative Massie.

Representative Massie, and the other members who will be joining him, deserve praise for speaking out, as Campaign for Liberty has heard from well-placed sources on Capitol Hill that the GOP leadership is pressuring members not to speak out against the Internet Tax Mandate because it is a “divisive” issue. But what leadership really means is, it divides those who oppose raising the price of everything you buy online and imposing new regulations on the Internet from those who support crony capitalism and giving tax-hungry governors new sources of revenue.

http://www.campaignforliberty.org/na...t-sales-taxes/

He'll be joined by other members who will voice their opposition as well.

New Directive:
Feb. 27, 2013: DoD Instruction 3025.21 Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies

[From link below] "...For the past 30 years, police departments throughout the United States have benefitted from the government’s largesse in the form of military weaponry and training, incentives offered in the ongoing “War on Drugs.” For the average citizen watching events such as the intense pursuit of the Tsarnaev brothers on television, it would be difficult to discern between fully outfitted police SWAT teams and the military.

The lines blurred even further Monday as a new dynamic was introduced to the militarization of domestic law enforcement. By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. Code titled “Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” the military has quietly granted itself the ability to police the streets without obtaining prior local or state consent, upending a precedent that has been in place for more than two centuries.

The most objectionable aspect of the regulatory change is the inclusion of vague language that permits military intervention in the event of “civil disturbances.” According to the rule:

Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances.

Bruce Afran, a civil liberties attorney and constitutional law professor at Rutgers University, calls the rule, “a wanton power grab by the military,” and says, “It’s quite shocking actually because it violates the long-standing presumption that the military is under civilian control.”

A defense official who declined to be named takes a different view of the rule, claiming, “The authorization has been around over 100 years; it’s not a new authority. It’s been there but it hasn’t been exercised. This is a carryover of domestic policy.” Moreover, he insists the Pentagon doesn’t “want to get involved in civilian law enforcement. It’s one of those red lines that the military hasn’t signed up for.” Nevertheless, he says, “every person in the military swears an oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States to defend that Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

One of the more disturbing aspects of the new procedures that govern military command on the ground in the event of a civil disturbance relates to authority. Not only does it fail to define what circumstances would be so severe that the president’s authorization is “impossible,” it grants full presidential authority to “Federal military commanders.” According to the defense official, a commander is defined as follows: “Somebody who’s in the position of command, has the title commander. And most of the time they are centrally selected by a board, they’ve gone through additional schooling to exercise command authority.”

As it is written, this “commander” has the same power to authorize military force as the president in the event the president is somehow unable to access a telephone. (The rule doesn’t address the statutory chain of authority that already exists in the event a sitting president is unavailable.) In doing so, this commander must exercise judgment in determining what constitutes, “wanton destruction of property,” “adequate protection for Federal property,” “domestic violence,” or “conspiracy that hinders the execution of State or Federal law,” as these are the circumstances that might be considered an “emergency.”

“These phrases don’t have any legal meaning,” says Afran. “It’s no different than the emergency powers clause in the Weimar constitution [of the German Reich]. It’s a grant of emergency power to the military to rule over parts of the country at their own discretion.”

Afran also expresses apprehension over the government’s authority “to engage temporarily in activities necessary to quell large-scale disturbances.”

“Governments never like to give up power when they get it,” says Afran. “They still think after twelve years they can get intelligence out of people in Guantanamo. Temporary is in the eye of the beholder. That’s why in statutes we have definitions. All of these statutes have one thing in common and that is that they have no definitions. How long is temporary? There’s none here. The definitions are absurdly broad.”

The U.S. military is prohibited from intervening in domestic affairs except where provided under Article IV of the Constitution in cases of domestic violence that threaten the government of a state or the application of federal law. This provision was further clarified both by the Insurrection Act of 1807 and a post-Reconstruction law known as the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (PCA). The Insurrection Act specifies the circumstances under which the president may convene the armed forces to suppress an insurrection against any state or the federal government. Furthermore, where an individual state is concerned, consent of the governor must be obtained prior to the deployment of troops. The PCA—passed in response to federal troops that enforced local laws and oversaw elections during Reconstruction—made unauthorized employment of federal troops a punishable offense, thereby giving teeth to the Insurrection Act.

Together, these laws limit executive authority over domestic military action. Yet Monday’s official regulatory changes issued unilaterally by the Department of Defense is a game-changer.

The stated purpose of the updated rule is “support in Accordance With the Posse Comitatus Act,” but in reality it undermines the Insurrection Act and PCA in significant and alarming ways. The most substantial change is the notion of “civil disturbance” as one of the few “domestic emergencies” that would allow for the deployment of military assets on American soil.

To wit, the relatively few instances that federal troops have been deployed for domestic support have produced a wide range of results. Situations have included responding to natural disasters and protecting demonstrators during the Civil Rights era to, disastrously, the Kent State student massacre and the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee.

Michael German, senior policy counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), noted in a 2009 Daily Kos article that, “there is no doubt that the military is very good at many things. But recent history shows that restraint in their new-found domestic role is not one of them.”

At the time German was referring to the military’s expanded surveillance techniques and hostile interventions related to border control and the War on Drugs. And in fact, many have argued that these actions have already upended the PCA in a significant way. Even before this most recent rule change, the ACLU was vocal in its opposition to the Department of Defense (DoD) request to expand domestic military authority “in the event of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high yield explosive (CBRNE) incidents.” The ACLU’s position is that civilian agencies are more than equipped to handle such emergencies since 9/11. (ACLU spokespersons in Washington D.C. declined, however, to be interviewed for this story.)

But while outcomes of military interventions have varied, the protocol by which the president works cooperatively with state governments has remained the same. The president is only allowed to deploy troops to a state upon request of its governor. Even then, the military—specifically the National Guard—is there to provide support for local law enforcement and is prohibited from engaging in any activities that are outside of this scope, such as the power to arrest.

Eric Freedman, a constitutional law professor from Hofstra University, also calls the ruling “an unauthorized power grab.” According to Freedman, “The Department of Defense does not have the authority to grant itself by regulation any more authority than Congress has granted it by statute.” Yet that’s precisely what it did. This wasn’t, however, the Pentagon’s first attempt to expand its authority domestically in the last decade.

the whole thing is worth reading. http://www.longislandpress.com/2013/...s-into-effect/

Old directive:
Jan. 15, 1986: DoD Instruction 5525.5 DoD Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Officials

Here is the story: With a little more than a week to go until the SCGOP state convention, things are beginning to get a little personal. S.C. Republican Party chairman Chad Connelly sent out an e-mail rant against upstate member
READ MORE: http://schotline.us/scgop/

Here is the video admitting to sending those defaming emails:
http://youtu.be/79-f9U0HBFs

Here is the lawsuit that he filed: http://schotline.us/wp-content/uploa...nellySCGOP.pdf

Here is a link to help with the filing fees if you want to help him:
http://www.gofundme.com/BFrank

Chad Connelly is the same person that stripped Chris Lawton from being a National Ron Paul Delegate in Tampa August of 2012.

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