Your Government Can Kill You

Provocative title, eh? Exaggeration? Check out this article and decide for yourself. From Mother Jones:

"When the US Government Can Kill You, Explained" by Adam Serwer
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/03/eric-holder-targeted-killing


Attorney General Eric Holder:
"'"Due process" and "judicial process" are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security.' Holder said. 'The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.'"

What? Sounds like Holder is using weasel words to justify doing whatever the hell he wants. Remember when those on the left said George Bush was a cowboy, taking the law into his own hands? Can you imagine what they (and their lapdogs in the media) would say if George Bush used these exact words?

"If the standards for when the government can send a deadly flying robot to vaporize you sound a bit subjective, that's because they are. Holder made clear that decisions about which citizens the government can kill are the exclusive province of the executive branch, because only the executive branch possess the 'expertise and immediate access to information' to make these life-and-death judgments."

Amazingly, I happen to agree with the ACLU:
"In a statement, Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's national security project, called the authority described in the speech 'chilling.' She urged the administration to release the Justice Department legal memo justifying the targeted killing program—a document that the ACLU and the New York Times are currently suing the US government to acquire. 'Anyone willing to trust President Obama with the power to secretly declare an American citizen an enemy of the state and order his extrajudicial killing should ask whether they would be willing to trust the next president with that dangerous power.'"

We know that Holder doesn't bother reading laws before offering an opinion (Arizona immigration laws, for instance). I wonder if he has read the Constitution...

Quoting anonymously from a mailing list that I am a member of: "This is completely appalling and goes far beyond any of the totalitarian powers that Bush II sought during his term. How can a president who prided himself on being a scholar of the constitution have reached this point?"