Unreviewable Authority to Execute Americans Without Charge or Trial

There’s a limit to what an Executive Order, by the President should encompass.

 

The Center For Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the American Civil Liberties Union today filed a brief in federal court responding to the Obama administration’s claims that no court should have any role in establishing or enforcing legal limitations on the executive’s authority to use lethal force against U.S. citizens who the executive has unilaterally determined to pose a threat to the nation. The groups’ brief came in their lawsuit challenging the government’s claimed authority to carry out targeted killings of U.S. citizens outside the context of armed conflict who do not pose an imminent threat.

Source: (http://goo.gl/XbTE) from ACLU Newsroom

 

Administration Seeks Easy Access To Americans’ Private Online Communications

There are threats to our freedom, in the past, now and sadly forever in the future, but this dose not give any administration the right to violate individual freedoms.

The Obama administration is seeking to expand the government’s ability to conduct invasive surveillance online, according to a report in The New York Times today. According to the report, the administration is expected to submit legislation to Congress early next year that would mandate that all online communications services use technologies that would make it easier for the government to collect private communications and decode encrypted messages that Americans send over texting platforms, BlackBerries, social networking sites and other “peer to peer” communications software.(http://goo.gl/pitK)

My personal feelings are best echoed by FDR:

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.

– Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in “Right Wing Radio Duck”

Donald’s life is turned upside-down by the current economic crisis and he finds himself unemployed and falling behind on his house payments. As his frustration turns into despair Donald discovers a seemingly sympathetic voice coming from his radio named Glenn Beck.

Endless War

A book well to consider reading about how “We as American people have changed in our attitude towards war”.

Bacevich is singularly withering on American public willingness to ignore those who do their fighting for them. He warns of “the evisceration of civic culture that results when a small praetorian guard shoulders the burden of waging perpetual war, while the great majority of citizens purport to revere its members, even as they ignore or profit from their service.” Here he has a particular right to be heard: on May 13, 2007, his son Andrew J. Bacevich Jr., an Army first lieutenant, was killed on combat patrol in Iraq. Bacevich does not discuss his tragic loss here, but wrote devastatingly about it at the time in The Washington Post: “Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.’s life is priceless. Don’t believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier’s life: I’ve been handed the check”.

Endless War

Source: NYT (http://goo.gl/hj3y)

Targeted Killing

This video from the American Civil Liberties Union condemns the U.S. government practice of issuing death sentences without due process as part of its targeted killing policy. “Targeted Killing” is being released to coincide with the filing today of an unprecedented lawsuit by the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) challenging the government’s asserted authority to use lethal force against U.S. citizens located far from any battlefield without judicial process, and without disclosing the standards it uses to target individuals for death.

Speak Out Against the “Pain Ray” at L.A. County Jail

Wouldn’t it just be easier and cheaper to send the inmates from the LA County Jail to Guantánamo Bay or maybe for the hard core inmates off to Abu Ghraid in Iraqi?  Look how much money the county could save, instead of buying these expensive, high tech weapons, to protect us, the jailhouse guards and peaceful other more likeable criminals from the really bad folks already behind bars.

The ACLU took to the airwaves this week to advance its advocacy against the implementation of Assault Intervention Devices — invisible microwave beam weapons originally developed by the military — as a way of subduing inmates at the Los Angeles County Jail by focusing a microwave beam on them to make them feel intolerable heat.

Speak Out Against the “Pain Ray” at L.A. County Jail

http://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/speak-out-against-pain-ray-la-count…

No Need to have a License to Kill – An Executive Will Work Nicely

This is not the “Rule of Law”, it’s that simple:

The Obama administration asserted it has the authority to carry out “targeted killings” of U.S. citizens outside armed conflict zones. In February, then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that the U.S. was authorized to take “direct action” against suspected terrorists and that “if we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”

It was reported widely, in fact, that the government keeps secret “kill lists,”which function as standing authorizations to use lethal force against anyone on the list, including American citizens.

Source: Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union by Suzanne Ito, ACLU

Targeted Killing: Death Without Due Process

It’s Been a Long Time a Com’in

Orange County, California has been a Republican hide out for so many years; usually the Democrats don’t even travel to the county seeking voters.  Boy this this good news!

Orange County has been a national symbol of conservatism for more than 50 years: birthplace of President Richard M. Nixon and home to John Wayne, a bastion for the John Birch Society, a land of orange groves and affluence, the region of California where Republican presidential candidates could always count on a friendly audience.

But this iconic county of 3.1 million people passed something of a milestone in June. The percentage of registered Republican voters dropped to 43 percent, the lowest level in 70 years.

Orange County Is No Longer Nixon Country

Source NYT (http://goo.gl/UvEv)

Only One Hacker Could Kill Us All

Why use a Sharpshooter when a Shotgun will Work?

Never ceases to amaze me!  Here’s 14 year hacker, tired of breaking into Ms. Sara Palin’s Hotmale account, so he goes after a Pentagon account, say, Bobby Gates?  Now we’re Nuking either China or Iran.

The Pentagon is contemplating an aggressive approach to defending its computer systems that includes preemptive actions such as knocking out parts of an adversary’s computer network overseas – but it is still wrestling with how to pursue the strategy legally.

The department is developing a range of weapons capabilities, including tools that would allow “attack and exploitation of adversary information systems” and that can “deceive, deny, disrupt, degrade and destroy” information and information systems, according to Defense Department budget documents.

Pentagon considers preemptive strikes as part of cyber-defense strategy

Source WoPo (http://goo.gl/Qfog)

Humiliation, the North Korean way

Gezz’s it was tough being an athlete in the 60’s for North Korea !!!

That team advanced to the quarterfinals by defeating Italy, then the strongest contender, but lost to Portugal 5-3. The players were greeted initially as national heroes, but their stardom was short-lived. North Korean refugees have described how the team and its coach were subjected to an ideological criticism session similar to the 2010 session. But escapees also said members of the 1966 team were relocated to remote locations in the countryside and forced to live and toil under harsh conditions.

Somewhat later in the article:

North Korean authorities periodically execute people in public – in markets and stadiums, and even riverbanks – for non-violent offenses such as ”illegal” border crossing. Local authorities require the family of the condemned, including young children, to stand in the front row of spectators. The government runs massive forced labor camps not only for persons accused of “political crimes” but also for their parents, spouses and children. Children born inside these camps live as prisoners and can spend their childhood in forced labor.