Category Archives: Law

UPDATE II: BHO: Uncle Sam’s Assassin (Killer Drones)

America, Barack Obama, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Democracy, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Just War, Law

The following is excerpted form “BHO: Uncle Sam’s Assassin,” , which you can catch on WND and on RT.

“Villagers in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen already know it, although the people on the ground near American drone bases in Somalia and Ethiopia are still blissfully unaware of it—Barack Obama is the uncrowned king of the killer drone.

In Iraq, ordinary men and women scan the skies nervously for the telltale metallic shimmer, wondering whether they are being simply surveilled from above, as promised, or targeted by Hellfire missiles. Ditto the Iranians, who recently downed, and promptly displayed to the world, an RQ-170 Sentinel, launched into Iranian airspace by Uncle Sam.

According to the Washington Post, ‘When Obama was sworn into office in 2009, the nation’s clandestine drone war was confined to a single country, Pakistan, where 44 strikes over five years had left about 400 people dead. The number of strikes has since soared to nearly 240, and the number of those killed, according to conservative estimates, has more than quadrupled.’

The New America Foundation tabled the findings to reflect the carnage in Pakistan by presidency.

Between 2004 and 2007, when Genghis Bush reigned supreme, America killed 112 Pakistanis. The total number of Pakistanis eliminated by drone between 2004 and 2011 was 2,680!

The POTUS’s growing fleet of armed Predators and Reapers is operated by both the CIA and the Military’s Joint Special Operations Command, each, evidently, with its own Kill List, and all under, ‘a complicated web of overlapping authorities.’ …

On Google, Obama was sticking to his guns. ‘Drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties,’ the president insisted. How many innocents has Obama been willing to write-off as acceptable collateral damage? For every one militant assassinated, 15 civilians are murdered. …

Little Shakira is the poster child for Uncle Sam’s outreach in the region…”

READ THE COMPLETE COLUMN, “BHO: Uncle Sam’s Assassin,” now on WND or on RT.

Support this writer’s work by clicking to “Recommend,” “tweet” and “Share” the weekly column.

UPDATED I: “Killer Drones” on RT. Please click to “Like,” “Share” and Tweet.

UPDATE II (Feb. 7): Not that I put much stock in “American Democracy” (we were founded as a republic), but the information in this Atlantic essay is useful: “Waging War in Secret vs. American Democracy.”

Deviants At DOJ Issue Diversity Directive

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Education, Justice, Law, Race, Racism

No need to wonder what “Barry Soetoro Frankenstein” meant by improving educational standards in his State of the Union address.

“Last month,” reports the New York Times, “the Obama administration issued important guidance to colleges and universities on how to increase racial diversity on campuses, explaining ways to navigate the narrow legal channel charted by the Supreme Court.”

Basically, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has been using its budget to advance factional interests, advising universities on how to vigorously incorporate race into student selection process without running afoul of the law.

One way these deviants operate is through “Pipeline Programs.” “An institution could form partnerships with other institutions of higher education, such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), other minority-serving institutions, or community colleges to help the institution increase diversity.”

The “GUIDANCE ON THE VOLUNTARY USE OF RACE TO ACHIEVE DIVERSITY IN POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION” is full of such legal tactical maneuvers.

UPDATED: The Despot’s Bag of Tricks

Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Liberty, Military, Terrorism, The State

In apartheid South Africa, denial of due process very often took the form of detention without trial. But, as I observed in Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, the South-African model of detention-without-trial is slowly becoming a fixture of the American legal landscape.

Via the Tenth Amendment Center:

Congress just passed, and the President just signed, a bill that gives legal authority to the President to kidnap and perpetually imprison persons, including American citizens, without the benefit of due process. …

The relevant sections of the bill are 1021 and 1022.

* Section 1021 asserts the President’s authority to arrest suspected (not convicted) terrorists and gives him the option to choose whether or not they even get a trial, and if so, what kind of trial.

* Section 1022 requires that a certain class of terrorist get no trial. Instead they must be held in military prisons, for as long as this President, or any future President desires.

SECTION 1021

Section 1021 is very expansive in its reach. It “includ[es] any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”

* Who is “any person?”
* What is a “belligerent act?”
* What is “direct support?”

One could be safe in assuming these words mean whatever a creatively-minded prosecutor, a flexible judge, and an ignorant jury define them to mean — EXCEPT THAT, UNDER THIS ACT, ONE MIGHT NEVER GET AS FAR AS A COURT HEARING.

These terms will be defined by the bureaucrats in power.

Note who the bill’s co-sponsor is: McMussolini.

UPDATE: RT: “He will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.”

These harsh words come courtesy of the executive director of the ACLU, formerly a supporter of the president but also just one of the many dissenters who have since grown disillusioned with an administration tarnished by unfulfilled campaign promises and continuous constitutional violations.

UPDATED: Just Like Hitler (Not)

Federalism, IMMIGRATION, Law, States' Rights

11 Replies

The outrage of it! Imagine giving local police the “authority to check the immigration status for individuals during traffic stops and other minor violations.” Can there be anything more heinous than the “police checking the immigration status of persons who are lawfully stopped or taken into custody”! What next? Take them off the streets if they’ve committed a crime? The mind boggles.

Lawmakers in Arizona, Mississippi, Indiana, Utah, South Carolina and Alabama have successfully passed strong enforcement legislation against illegal immigration … The U.S Department of Justice has moved forward with lawsuits against four of those states, and Arizona’s well-known bill, S.B. 1070, will be reviewed by the United States Supreme Court some time next spring. … The main focus of the DOJ lawsuits are laws that give local police authority to check the immigration status for individuals during traffic stops and other minor violations.

(NumbersUSA)

According to the Los Angeles Times, federal judges have responded by blocking these “strict new immigration laws adopted by conservative legislatures in half a dozen states …” However, “legal experts believe the Supreme Court’s conservative majority will take a sharply different approach.”

The high court said it would hear the Arizona immigration case in April, and Eastman said he expected the justices to divide along the same lines as in the May ruling upholding Arizona’s sanctions on employers who hire illegal workers. Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined with Roberts in that case.

(LA Times)

As a legal immigrant, I went through an ordeal to get into the US. About me, Uncle Sam knows, for instance, that I do not carry any dread diseases. (I suspect some of you are relieved to know that the new immigrants at your kid’s school are TB free, right? Oh, they’re illegal?) Would I mind if a cop asked me for my ID, if he had reason to suspect I was up to no good? Why would I? The last time a cop asked me for an ID was when I applied for a license to carry concealed. That seemed eminently reasonable.

UPDATE (Dec. 30): Myron, unchecked crime is no answer. What a terrible position a liberal American is in: He much admit that as an upstanding citizen who obeys the law, he should be left unmolested by those who’ve sworn to protect him, whereas those who are not in this category should be sent packing. The upshot of this hue and cry over checking the immigration status of individuals who’ve broke the law will be that the poor natives will continue to be molested by the homegrown terrorists of the TSA, whereby your average illegal drunk driver, a lethal weapon, will leave the scene of an accident having obtained all the protections the ACLU can agitate for.