Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about getting a blow job. But here we have President Obama, a constitutional lawyer and professor, who is technically now a dictator without anyone calling for impeachment (not to suggest that the same wasn't true about George Bush). The Fifth Amendment specifically states: "No person shall be... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Do Democrats understand that Obama is destroying the Democratic party? (And here's a scary thought: the dictatorial power Obama has amassed will then pass to a Republican.) How has the American government come to sink so low that it kills American citizens without due process and then claims it can do so in complete secrecy? As Marcy Wheeler put it, "Judge, we don’t really want to explain why we think we have the authority to target American citizens with no due process, we just do."

FTA:

At this point, I didn't believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record. In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki's father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration last late night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims... But what's most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is "state secrets": in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are "state secrets," and thus no court may adjudicate its legality.

...I would hope that nobody needs me or anyone else to explain why this assertion of power is so pernicious -- at least as pernicious as any power asserted during the Bush/Cheney years. If the President has the power to order American citizens killed with no due process, and to do so in such complete secrecy that no courts can even review his decisions, then what doesn't he have the power to do?

...Obama's now asserting a power so radical -- the right to kill American citizens and do so in total secrecy, beyond even the reach of the courts -- that it's "too harsh even for" one of the most far-right War on Terror cheerleading-lawyers in the nation. But that power is certainly not "too harsh" for the kind-hearted Constitutional scholar we elected as President... One other thing, as always: vote Democrat, because the Republicans are scary!

Obama argues his assassination program is a "state secret"

DISCUSS!

Original posting by Braincrave Second Life staff on Sep 28, 2010 at http://www.braincrave.com/viewblog.php?id=336