[Peace-discuss] Obama administration vs. the Constitution

[C. G. Estabrook]

  [As many of our fellow citizens call for a return to the Constitution, we 
should be supporting them. The criminal and unconstitutional actions of this 
administration should long ago have led to a demand for impeachment. --CGE]

Barack Obama, Leon Panetta and Robert Gates: Hit men vs. the Constitution
Published: Tuesday, September 21, 2010
By NAT HENTOFF

President Obama, CIA Director Leon Panetta and Defense Secretary Robert Gates 
are now defendants in a historic lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, 
Washington, by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for 
Constitutional Rights.

The case is brought on behalf of American citizen Nasser Al-Aulaqi. The 
complaint in the case starkly and accurately lays out the constitutional issue 
at stake in these words:

“This case concerns the executive’s asserted authority to carry out ‘targeted 
killings’ of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism far from any field of armed 
conflict.”

The complaint says the U.S. government “maintains lists of suspects — ‘kill 
lists’ — against whom lethal force can be used without charge, trial or conviction.”

The Constitution clearly commands that “no person shall be ... deprived of life, 
liberty or property without due process of law.”

The first U.S. citizen whom the administration has confirmed as being on its hit 
list is Anwar Al-Aulaqi. He himself did not bring this suit because he has been 
hiding for his life in Yemen. His father, Nasser Al-Aulaqi, acting on his son’s 
behalf, asked the ACLU to champion constitutional rights for his son.

The suit demands the government “disclose the standards it uses to place U.S. 
citizens on government kill lists.”

Is that too much to ask — not, mind you, of a ruthless government in Sudan or 
Iran but the government of the United States of America?

I’m not aware of many free Americans being much concerned by this terminal 
execution of constitutional due process. I don’t see protestors on the streets.

I am aware of much of the evidence the Obama administration believes it has 
directly connecting Anwar Al-Aulaqi to acts of terrorism. But where does it find 
the assassinating authority to obliterate Mr. Al-Aulaqi without even bringing a 
charge against him?

The CIA, whose drone planes serve as executioner or hit man — operates in a 
secret wing of our government never envisioned by our Founders .

What are the the legally required “extraordinary circumstances” authorizing 
President Obama’s relentless pursuit of targeted individuals in countries with 
which we are not at war?

“Outside of armed conflict, both the Constitution and international law prohibit 
targeted killing except as a last resort to protect against concrete, specific, 
and imminent threat of serious physical injury,” says the suit.

Also violating the heart of the Constitution, the suit says, is the Obama 
administration’s refusal to disclose its standards for targeting someone for 
execution. Due process requires such disclosure “at a minimum,” according to the 
suit.

“The accumulation of all powers,” wrote James Madison in Federalist Papers No. 
47, ”legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... may justly be 
pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

The tea partiers appear to be more concerned about upholding the Constitution 
than many of us are. What do they think of the official, secret, targeted 
killings of American citizens by the U.S. government?

What do you think?

Is this still America?

—Syndicated columnist Nat Hentoff is a member of the Reporters Committee for 
Freedom of the Press and a senior fellow with the Cato Institute, a libertarian 
think tank.

http://www.trentonian.com/articles/2010/09/21/opinion/doc4c983badc8a18020542248.txt