President Obama

by Jeremy Leaming

Despite attorneys in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel who appear to have produced a lengthy justification for targeted killings that skewers the English language to wend its around constitutional principles such as due process before the government can deprive a person of liberty, President Obama has nonetheless taken solid action to counter the right’s take on the Constitution as a document that limits government’s ability to take collective action to protect and advance the nation’s welfare.

In a piece for The New Republic, Simon Lazarus, senior counsel to the Constitutional Accountability Center, says it’s about time – likely long overdue -- that progressives provide a compelling alternative to the right’s simplistic, but effective rhetoric of a Constitution that is all about individual rights and a weak central government.

Quickly after the president provided some staunchly liberal rhetoric in his Second Inaugural address, Republican lawmakers, such as Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-K.Y.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) brayed that the president was ushering in or attempting to an age of radical liberalism. Grassley, as noted here, also groused that the president had turned the Second Amendment on its head by arguing that new measures aimed at curbing gun violence were no threat to the individual right to bear arms.

The president’s rhetoric on the Constitution, Lazarus writes, “echoes that of the Reconstruction Congresses which enacted the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. In line with then-existing Supreme Court precedent, they believed Congress empowered to prevent interference with the exercise of individual rights created by constitutional prohibitions on government. Specifically, they held the federal government responsible for preventing private violence and intimidation designed to deter former slaves from voting and enjoying other constitutionally prescribed liberties. And they wrote into the amendments express authority for Congress to ‘enforce’ that responsibility.”  

by Jeremy Leaming

The increasingly disturbing use of Reaper and Predator drones to kill suspected terrorists, and too often civilians alongside them, was apparently given the green light by some DOJ lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). But that’s not for certain since the Obama administration rarely talks about the drone war.

But a leaked white paper apparently crafted by lawyers in the OLC may be a summary of a more expansive document – the ACLU is suing to find out. The paper, however, as The New York Times and others have quickly noted advances convoluted and radical arguments for an outrageous expansion of executive power.

Constitutional law scholar and Georgetown University law school professor David Cole, in a piece for NYR blog explores, “how we made killing easy.” And Cole notes by the way that the Obama administration is battling “tooth and nail” the ACLU’s effort to force the release of the entire  legal document.

The white paper argues that an informed, high-ranking government official can order the killing of a U.S. citizen integral to or associated with Al-Qaeda abroad if the person poses an “imminent threat of violent attack” against the country, the person is unlikely to be captured and that the killing operation would be conducted in accordance with laws governing war.

The brief paper tosses aside due process in a strained effort to justify executive branch power, with essentially no oversight, to order the killing of terrorist suspects, even U.S. citizens.