How much evidence should the US government be obliged to show before it kills an American citizen?
None, according to the Obama administration.
That was the lead for a piece on Obama’s assassination policies I wrote for Christian Science Monitor in 2011. Unfortunately, that policy is still in place – despite all the breakthroughs that progressives have made in the past 2 years.
The Obama administration yesterday leaked out its confidential legal paper on killing Americans to NBC News. Obama’s legal wizards decided that the Fifth Amendment’s pledge that no citizen shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” is invalid in cases of imminent attack by terrorists.
Though this might sound reasonable, the memo proceeds to craft a totally bogus notion of “imminent.” But, as John Glaser notes at Antiwar.com, “The memo refers to what it calls a “broader concept of imminence” than what has traditionally been required, like actual intelligence an ongoing plot against the US. ‘The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,’ the memo states, contradicting conventional international law.”
Could not resist reposting the illustration that the American Conservative used for an article I wrote on Obama’s assassination policy a couple years ago –
The guy behind that gun might be the front man for that 80’s hair band, Twisted Sister. He might have gone all Ted Nugent or something.
It could be Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin if it’s an old picture. I think all his curly blonde hair turned white and won’t hold a perm anymore.
Twisted Sister – ya, that would explain the policy as well as anything Eric Holder has said.
Bravo! I enjoyed your Brainy Quotes and followed a link to the Wikipedia and then to your blog. I am related to the Beauvert family few of whom escaped persecution in France to become refugees in Scotland who’s progeny were forced to shift to Daire Ireland which became Londonderry Northern Ireland. My line shifted back to Scotland before emigrating to the USA and elsewhere. The surname Beauvert/Bovaird/Bavaird/Bovard/Bavard and other variants is a small and unusual surname. I believe we are cousins. If you have an interest in family history you might contact me at catherinelcurran@hotmail.com
and marehmcnair@comcast.net a family historian who is researching this line from Bovard,Pennsylvania USA
Catherine Curran – thanks for your post – always neat to hear from a fellow Huguenot. I talk a bit about family history in my new memoir, Public Policy Hooligan – ” Roughly half the Bovards living in Paris were killed during the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, along with 30,000 other Huguenots. Three Bovards fled past drunken guards at Paris’s city gates, raced to the coast, hijacked a rowboat, and made it across the English Channel and took refuge in London. (I knew not to bet the rent money on family lore.)”
After spending a little time on the Continent, I concluded that “Getting kicked out of France was the best thing that ever happened to the Bovard family.” I will shoot you an email & catch up on your pages of the family history.