After stonewalling for more than a year federal judges and ordinary citizens who sought the revelation of its secret legal research justifying the presidential use of drones to kill persons overseas - even Americans - claiming the research was so sensitive and so secret that it could not be revealed without serious consequences, the government sent a summary of its legal memos to an NBC newsroom earlier this week.

This revelation will come as a great surprise, and not a little annoyance, to U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon, who heard many hours of oral argument during which the government predicted gloom and doom if its legal research were subjected to public scrutiny. She very reluctantly agreed with the feds, but told them she felt caught in "a veritable Catch-22," because the feds have created "a thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret."

She was writing about President Obama killing Americans and refusing to divulge the legal basis for claiming the right to do so. Now we know that basis.

The undated and unsigned 16-page document leaked to NBC refers to itself as a Department of Justice white paper. Its logic is flawed, its premises are bereft of any appreciation for the values of the Declaration of Independence and the supremacy of the Constitution, and its rationale could be used to justify any breaking of any law by any "informed, high-level official of the U.S. government."

The quoted phrase is extracted from the memo, which claims that the law reposes into the hands of any unnamed "high-level official," not necessarily the president, the lawful power to decide when to suspend constitutional protections guaranteed to all persons and kill them without any due process whatsoever. This is the power claimed by kings and tyrants. It is the power most repugnant to American values. It is the power we have arguably fought countless wars to prevent from arriving here. Now, under Obama, it is here.

This came to a boiling point when Obama dispatched CIA drones to kill New Mexico-born and al-Qaida-affiliated Anwar al-Awlaki while he was riding in a car in a desert in Yemen in September 2011. A follow-up drone, also dispatched by Obama, killed Awlaki's 16-year-old Colorado-born son and his American friend. Awlaki's American father sued the president in federal court in Washington, D.C., trying to prevent the killing. Justice Department lawyers persuaded a judge that the president always follows the law, and besides, without any evidence of presidential law breaking, the elder Awlaki had no case against the president. Within three months of that ruling, the president dispatched his drones and the Awlakis were dead. This spawned follow-up lawsuits, in one of which McMahon gave her reluctant ruling.

Then the white paper appeared. It claims that if an American is likely to trigger the use of force 10,000 miles from here, and he can't easily be arrested, he can be murdered with impunity. This notwithstanding state and federal laws that expressly prohibit non-judicial killing, an executive order signed by every president from Gerald Ford to Obama prohibiting American officials from participating in assassinations, the absence of a declaration of war against Yemen, treaties expressly prohibiting this type of killing, and the language of the Declaration, which guarantees the right to live, and the Constitution, which requires a jury trial before the government can deny that right.

The president cannot lawfully order the killing of anyone, except according to the Constitution and federal law. Under the Constitution, he can only order killing using the military when the U.S. has been attacked or when an attack is so imminent that delay would cost innocent lives. He can also order killing using the military in pursuit of a declaration of war enacted by Congress.

Unless Obama knows that an attack from Yemen on our shores is imminent, he'd be hard-pressed to argue that a guy in a car in the desert 10,000 miles from here - no matter his intentions - poses a threat so imminent to the U.S. that he needs to be killed on the spot in order to save the lives of Americans who would surely die during the time it would take to declare war on the country that harbors him, or during the time it would take to arrest him. Under no lawful circumstances may he use CIA agents for killing. Surely, CIA agents can use deadly force defensively to protect themselves and their assets, but they may not use it offensively. Federal laws against murder apply to the president and to all federal agents and personnel in their official capacities, wherever they go on the planet.

Obama has argued that he can kill Americans whose deaths he believes will keep us all safer, without any due process whatsoever. No law authorizes that. His attorney general has argued that the president's careful consideration of each target and the narrow use of deadly force are an adequate and constitutional substitute for due process. No court has ever approved that. And his national security adviser has argued that the use of drones is humane since they are "surgical" and only kill their targets. We know that is incorrect, as the folks who monitor all this say that 11 percent to 17 percent of the 2,300 drone-caused deaths have been those of innocent bystanders.

Did you consent to a government that can kill whom it wishes? How about one that plays tricks on federal judges? How long will it be before the presidential killing comes home?

a Government that claims what the Obama Administration claims,has gone Rogue!
Such a Government is NOT the Protector,but the worst Enemy of it's Citizens!

The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his.

For the New Intellectual

Galt’s Speech,(Atlas Shrugged)

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government.html

Ayn Rand was a very intelligent woman, but maybe her books was the inspiration for what is going on now? something that i don't really believe, but it is possible...

I think she called it a Warning,not a Blueprint!
CTs might think different!
Actually I have seen Posts by quite a few who claim she was a Shill for the Illuminati!

This is what some 25yo had to say!

>>>>If Rand had had her way we'd live under a totalitarian private state as there can be no reliable checks & balances without the civil state. The most ruthless private individual, in his own self-interest, would simply come to rule over everybody else and you'd have to be a hippy or a Marxist to believe that this is not in Human nature to do this.<<<<

Note:Rand never recommended there be no Government!

i'm sure it wasn't her intentions, but CTer's will believe whatever it is they believe

they sure will!

http://www.sott.net/article/258186-US-government-drone-war-against-US-citizens-Spy-drone-used-in-hunt-for-ex-soldier-accused-of-killing-three

National security is far to vague, and its application to dismiss concerns overboard.

We need to demand a detailed, specific definition for what it means for national security to be in jeopardy and an objective litmus test.

We need to demand that laws be followed, and executive breaches be punished severely.

A problem that few politicians are trying to tackle, and they are often marginalized and called crazy.

Such hypocrisy, Drones have been active for the last 20+ years. The no fly zones used by the USA during operation "desert storm" killed countless lives in Iraq. That program was in direct "seasoning" and precurser to the later war in Iraq. Desert Storm was intiated by Papa Bush, second phased by both Clinton Administrations, followed up by little Bush and completed by Obama. The Drone program is nothing new. Its interesting that its an issue today. It did not all of a sudden become wrong in 2013 when its been in practice since 1991. Pure political hypocracy. The no fly zone over Iraq lasted 13 years of not only droneing and targeted killings, but air bombardments, 13 years worth. All before 911.Political hypocrisy at its best.

Perhaps in this narrow field. There are those who see the problems for what they are, without political or racial bias. I understand your protest and agree that this office takes it's share of the blame from the past. What I'd like to see is mutual respect here, and clear headed solutions to the problems presented. We may live comfortable lives despite all the signs. We need to focus on a better world for generations to come. Can we do that divided?

The President of the USA takes an oath to protect the USA from enemies both foreign and domestic. Drones are being used for that purpose, and, yes, drones were being used long before Barack Obama moved into the White House.

A drone is a modern-day tool for modern-day warfare. I get the impression that some people are using archaic thinking in regards to modern war. Then again, I could be wrong.

what people are forgetting is that okiller is sending drones into countries we are not at war with and kiliing people... a direct breach of UN rules and our government standards...

I believe you are. Circumventing the Constitutional limitations and the international laws of war by resorting to warlike criminal actions in an effort to fight a "modern" (undeclared) war against perceived enemies is not only completely dishonourable, it remains the most egregious of criminal acts.

It doesn't matter how it's spun, crimes against humanity are still crimes. Opposition to them is rational and in keeping with the principles of any society which dares to call itself civilized. Such opposition can't be discounted as "archaic" thinking, no matter how much it might be spun that way.