by Andrew Napolitano
The leader of the government regularly sits down with his senior generals and spies and advisers and reviews a list of the people they want him to authorize their agents to kill. They do this every Tuesday morning when the leader is in town. The leader once condemned any practice even close to this, but now relishes the killing because he has convinced himself that it is a sane and sterile way to keep his country safe and himself in power. The leader, who is running for re-election, even invited his campaign manager to join the group that decides whom to kill.
This is not from a work of fiction, and it is not describing a series of events in the Kremlin or Beijing or Pyongyang. It is a fair summary of a 6,000-word investigative report in The New York Times earlier this week about the White House of Barack Obama. Two Times journalists, Jo Becker and Scott Shane, painstakingly and chillingly reported that the former lecturer in constitutional law and liberal senator who railed against torture and Gitmo now weekly reviews a secret kill list, personally decides who should be killed and then dispatches killers all over the world – and some of his killers have killed Americans.
We have known for some time that President Obama is waging a private war. By that I mean he is using the CIA on his own – and not the military after congressional authorization – to fire drones at thousands of persons in foreign lands, usually while they are riding in a car or a truck. He has done this both with the consent and over the objection of the governments of the countries in which he has killed. He doesn’t want to talk about this, but he doesn’t deny it. How chilling is it that David Axelrod – the president’s campaign manager – has periodically seen the secret kill list? Might this be to keep the killings politically correct?
Can the president legally do this? In a word: No.
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 and certain that delay would cost innocent American lives, or in pursuit of a congressional declaration of war. Under federal law, he can only order killing using civilians when a person has been sentenced lawfully to death by a federal court and the jury verdict and the death sentence have been upheld on appeal. If he uses the military to kill, federal law requires public reports of its use to Congress and congressional approval after 180 days.
The U.S. has not declared war since World War II. If the president knows that an attack on our shores is imminent, he’d be hard-pressed to argue convincingly that a guy in a truck in a desert 10,000 miles from here – no matter his intentions – poses a threat to the U.S. so imminent and certain 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 circumstances may he use civilian agents for non-judicial killing. Surely, CIA agents can use deadly force to protect themselves, but they may not use it offensively. Federal laws against murder apply to the president and to all federal agents and personnel, wherever they go on the planet.
Since 9/11, the United States government has set up national security systems that function not under the Constitution, not under the Geneva Conventions, not under the rule of law, not under the rules of war, not under federal law, but under a new secret system crafted by the Bush administration and personally directed by Obama, the same Obama who condemned these rules as senator and then extended them as president. In the name of fighting demons in pick-up trucks and wars that Congress has never declared, the government shreds our rights, taps our cellphones, reads our emails, kills innocents abroad, strip searches 87-year-old grandmothers in wheelchairs and 3-year-old babies in their mothers’ arms, and offers secrecy when the law requires accountability.
Obama has argued that his careful consideration of each person he orders killed and the narrow use of deadly force are an adequate and constitutional substitute for due process. The Constitution provides for no such thing. He has also argued that the use of drones to do his killing is humane since they are “surgical” and only kill their targets. We know that is incorrect. And he has argued that these killings are consistent with our values. What is he talking about? The essence of our values is the rule of law, not the rule of presidents.
Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written six books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is It Is Dangerous To Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit creators.com.
Copyright © 2012 Andrew P. Napolitano
The Obama regime wanted to imprison members of the Bush administration for condoning and using “enhanced interrogation techniques”, which killed no one and produced lots a valuable Intel. Comrade Obama is bragging about picking out targets for drone rocket attacks? Killing lots of people and producing NO Intel! Where’s the Outrage?!
Michael – BOTH Bush and Obama violated the constitution with these acts. The real outrage is the partisanship over the outrage. Republicans only seem to oppose such things when done by a democrat, and democrats only oppose them when done by a republican. ALL these actions are an outrage.
And all this partisanship at the expense of FREEDOM and LIBERTY !!!
Double “O” bama, licensed to kill. I see a movie in this.
I’m really disturbed that the judge introduces facts that don’t exist such as the term torture. I haven’t seen any credible evidence to prove the torture was ever used other than some partisan crackpot who THINKs it happens.
@onetenther George Bush admitted to torture in his book and is now wanted under warrant in numerous foreign countries which is why he does not travel abroad.
Godfather!
This would be the example of what RULE does and those who support it. To decide for themselves who lives and who dies. Where is it they get these ideas for which they decide? They create them out of thin air like dollars, (wait, isn’t this the same group?). Mr. Napolitano has one part incorrect, Obama doesn’t decide he adheres to what was decided. The decision makers behind the corporate structure make the choices, after all they have decided to authorize themselves as the almighty authority over all life.
This is the thing we need to recognize about decisions, is once someone makes one and effort will be made. Our Rulers are very consistent about their choices because they have decided they shall RULE! and will put in ideas and more choices for this direction.
WE the PEOPLE lack this effort because we do not recognize our direction which is in opposition to Rule and is called Republics sovereign from rule idiocy. We refuse to understand Republics and we refuse to decide based upon these. We refuse to use our Declaration of Independence as our basis for such choices because we THINK we know so much yet we know so little.
In truth we do not need them to kill us because we are already doing a great job of killing ourselves, our Republics, our Sovereignty and most importantly our REASON for independence to begin with.
When WE refuse to support ourselves, our ideas in support of LIFE in Republics do WE subscribe ourselves to this list because the DECIDING live within you. For without choice would creation parish and life will become non existent.
LIFE, its everywhere you are should you DECIDE to keep it. Those deciding against you have no
authority to do so and it is your decision to allow them only. The mirror is a reflection of your own actions by choice.
If a governor of one of the 50 States used a drone to assassinate a criminal who was difficult to bring to justice because he was beyond State jurisdiction, it would be murder, and everyone would call it that. The fact that the killing occurred on foreign soil would not blind us to the extra-legal nature of the act. The same should be true of Obama: His assassination of individuals, particularly American citizens, on foreign soil is murder, and he should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. Unfortunately, nobody in Congress has the moral courage to seek his impeachment, and the press has insulated him against criticism. The President of the U.S. has become the “assassin in chief.” It is past time for the States to secede and part ways with the criminal organization called the federal government. May God send us courageous leaders to resist federal tyranny!
THIS IS WRONG; I do not care what political party you belong to [or not] it is not justified. STOP IT!
Anyone who has ever bothered to READ our Constitution already knows this. We are “represented” by a tyrant, and I can only hope enough astute people will realise this by November and give HIM his waling papers. Perhaps, once he’s gone and the Constitution is restored to its rightful place, he can be brought up on charges. Had any nazi operatives conducted themselves as this kinyun has of late, they’d have been tried and convicted at Nurenburg. And this individual swore an oath to uphold the Constitution? Liar…….
reminds me of the oldest lie in the universe… “I will ascend, I will be like God”. It didn’t work out so well for that rebel, did it? It won’t for this one either, long term. His day of reckoning will come. And he will realise just WHO that God is whom he attempts to usurp. He, together with his hand-picked minions.
Jhn 10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have [it] more abundantly.