(2011-09-30) Al Awlaki Assassinated By Us

Anwar Al Awlaki was killed by the US today. During the Bush years, civil libertarians who tried to convince conservatives to oppose that administration's radical excesses would often ask things like this: would you be comfortable having Hillary Clinton wield the power to spy on your calls or imprison you with no judicial reivew or oversight? So for you good progressives out there justifying this, I would ask this: how would the power to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process look to you in the hands of, say, Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann?

See 2010-08-05-AwlakiLawyerSuit.

Oct15 update: it's ok, they have rules that explain why. Too bad citizens don't get to know the rules. Whether the President has the authority to order the CIA to assassinate American citizens without due process — whether the Fourth and Fifth Amendments permit such extreme acts — is a matter that courts should decide, not the President’s personal partisan appointees such as David Barron and Marty Lederman. Seeing how flexible Lederman is willing to be based on who is in the Oval Office only underscores the dangers of allowing all of these vital issues to be decided within the Executive Branch, with no checks, no transparency, no oversight and no due process provided by other branches.

Oct21 update: his 16-year-old US-born son was just killed, too, in a separate attack. It is unknown whether the U.S. targeted the teenager or whether he was merely “collateral damage.” The reason that’s unknown is because the Obama administration refuses to tell us.