Our Strange Constitution
I’m not even slightly surprised to find out that the Obama administration has some kind of process in place to assassinate American citizens who it’s decided are in cahoots with terrorists. I was always raised to appreciate the “out of control spies” genre of movies and to assume that they represent a certain level of insight into what’s going on. But the story reflects a pretty odd feature of our political system, namely that the president seems most empowered in precisely those areas of governance that ought to give you the most concern about tyrannical abuses.
If the President wants to do something like implement a domestic policy proposal he campaigned on—charge polluters for global warming emissions, for example—he faces a lot of hurdles. He needs majority support on a House committee or three. He also needs majority support on a Senate committee or three. Then he needs to get a majority in the full House of Representatives. And then he needs to de facto needs a 60 percent supermajority in the Senate. And then it’s all subject to judicial review.
But if Scooter Libby obstructs justice, the president has an un-reviewable, un-checkable power to offer him a pardon or clemency. If Bill Clinton wants to bomb Serbia, then Serbia gets bombed. If George W Bush wants to hold people in secret prisons and torture them, then tortured they shall be. And if Barack Obama wants to issue a kill order on someone or other, then the order goes out. And if Congress actually wants to remove a president from office, it faces extremely high barriers to doing so.
Whether or not you approve of this sort of executive power in the security domain, it’s a bit of a weird mismatch. You would think that it’s in the field of inflicting violence that we would want the most institutional restraint. Instead, the president faces almost no de facto constraints on his deployment of surveillance, military, and intelligence authority but extremely tight constraint on his ability to implement the main elements of the his domestic policy agenda. I think it’s telling that the US has generally not advised countries engaged in a democratic transition (think Germany and Japan after WWII or Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, etc. after the fall of Communism) to imitate our form of government.
121 Responses to “Our Strange Constitution”
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February 4th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Ok, so the pardon power doesn’t fit with your other examples at all. It should probably be dropped from your post.
Other than that, I mostly agree. What you have to remember (or know in the first place, as the case may be), is that the Framers were very worried about taxation, and not all that worried about the President starting an unprovoked war of aggression with America’s tiny pathetic military.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Well, you know Matt, your pardon example aside, the President’s power to do these things unchecked by Congress or the Courts is obviously a matter of serious debate. It is, I’ll grant you, strange that our history is such that the other branches have not done more to assert their institutional prerogatives, but it’s hardly the case that the Constitution makes clear they don’t have any.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
This argument would make sense if the constitution gave the President the right to kill American citizens. It does not give the President that right under any circumstances whatsoever. In fact, it expressly denies the President the right to ever set an individuals punishment for any crime they commit under any and every circumstance.
But it’s nice to see Matt has no problems with the President murdering Americans with no due process. It dopesn’t shock me, but it does mean that there is absolutely nothing you morons can now say that gives Obama any kind moral authority. There is no way you can claim he is less bad than George Bush. He’s a murdering war criminal scumbag.
Matt’s entire post is a lie. The President does not have this authority and this post STRONGLY implies that he does.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Well, the Constitution sez that only Congress can declare war. It wasn’t anywhere near as easy to deploy troops halfway around the world in 1789 as it is now, and I wonder if the thought of quick military interventions didn’t cross the founding fathers’ minds. I also wonder if they truly appreciated the what-if-everyone-is-corrupted issues that have arisen with George Bush daring Congress to stop any of the nefarious things he was doing and Congress deciding to not. Yes there are procedures in the Constitution for handling executive badness but what if everyone in the government decides not to use those procedures?
Kind of similar to the founders not explicitly mandating majority rule in the Senate because it was unthinkable at the time that a minority would stop up the works through filibusters. Overall the founders did a really good job but they missed a few spots.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
At least you dickless, moral-retards would have pretended to think this was a bad thing under Bush. Now you pretend that the President is a king and can issue writs of murder and that its completely constitutional.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
How Long before the shitbag-from-lowell comes in finding a way to argue that this is perfectly fine and only ‘protest people’ could possible have a problem with Obama being able to have anyone he wants killed on his say so.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Matt, this has nothing to do with the Constitution which severely limits the President’s foreign policy powers. Congress declares wars and ratifies treaties. It has to do with tradition thats been built up sine WWII to give the President huge leeway in foreign policy.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Instead, the president faces almost no de facto constraints on his deployment of surveillance, military, and intelligence authority but extremely tight constraint on his ability to implement the main elements of the his domestic policy agenda.
Watergate? A cynic might say that was only a scandal b/c Nixon messed with other elites (the Democratic Party.)
February 4th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
I’d piss on Obama at this point before I’d vote for him. No good American would do otherwise. Sadly, we’re a bit lacking for Good americans these days. All we have are good germans.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
I think the answer to Matt’s sort-of question is that the Framers were overly optimistic about Congress’ willingness to actually limit the President’s power through its spending authority and/or impeachment, although certainly for most of the first 120 or so years the Constitution was in effect, custom was sufficient to be a reasonably effective check.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
I don’t think the Constitution can be blamed for the fact that Presidents make campaign promises that bare little relation to what their office is in position to deliver. The Founders were aware of what they were doing and explained their reasons for doing so, and I would think that an argument that they were wrong should begin with an examination of these reasons and an explanation of where they fall short.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
How does Yglesias know the U.S. hasn’t advised countries to imitate our form of government? Just because the types of governments that those countries implemented weren’t (aren’t) like ours doesn’t mean the U.S. didn’t try to have them imitate ours.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
It would be an interesting thought experiment to rip up the current US Constitution and start from scratch, not planning a relatively orderly way to build a confederation of states in an 18th century mostly rural society, but the world as it is in 2010.
I mean, some areas come to mind immediately we’d do differently today: lifetime terms for judges, the 2nd amendment would not be as unlimited as it is, 2-year House terms and thus never ending election cycles should be changed, probably a 1 term, 8-year presidency would give us actual statesmanship instead of nonstop re-election politics.
There’s probably more of these, as I said a somewhat interesting “what if” essay or book is probably buried in there.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
The constitution is fairly clear on this point:
Assuming “put that motherfucker on the To Kill list” doesn’t amount to due process, I don’t know what Matt’s talking about.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Any large country with a lot of international responsibilities is going to want it’s leadership to have as free a hand as possible to conduct it’s foreign affairs. This isn’t something new. Do you think the American people had any say over the WWII combat strategy? Howe about the Civil War?
Conversely, internal reform is always just short of impossible. The US fought a civil war precisely because fighting a war was easier than the needed reform of ending slavery. The Romans conquered much of the (at the time) while it’s antiquated civic-republican government was completely unwilling to address it’s most basic problems.
This isn’t a probme unique to America. It’s a problem of human nature. Extroverted, violent power is popular and unchallenged (bombing Serbia, assassinating terrorist suspects) while internal, legislative power (fixing potholes, raising taxes) is never trusted and easily opposed. Don’t blame American government for that because it’s true everywhere, even in dictatorships.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Nice to see Obama killing Godwin’s Law. Hard to invoke it when Obama declares the right to summarily execute people.
Republicans should impeach when they retake congress, no matter how hypocritical. Subverting the constitution is Treason.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
When you say you are at war with the United States, the United States government will endeavour to honor your statement – like it did with Jeff Davis, Bobby Lee and the reast of the boys back in the day.
If Lincoln would have had Predators & Reapers, sure as heck he would have tried to take out the leadership in Richmond pretty darn early.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
It wasn’t anywhere near as easy to deploy troops halfway around the world in 1789 as it is now
No, it took us until 1801 to deploy troops halfway around the world.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Seems like a pretty reasonable framework for war time. And considering that we’re always at war, it makes sense.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Something I tell my libertarian friends all the time is that, as Ano21 says, the constitution was written for a very different world. As per Matt’s point, technologies now allow the executive branch to do all sorts of potentially liberty-infringing things that the founders never imagined. Also, “do nothing” is just not an option for the government’s role in much of the modern economy. Things like copyright, patents, and telecom are a huge part of the modern economy.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
I don’t know why Matthew thinks this is so strange. If you have a terrorist that needs assassinating, what does the extreme Left thinks we ought to do – have Congress give its approval via a bill passed with 60 votes and then have judicial process to see if it is OK? What’s the terrorist gonna do – sit around waiting for three years while the government figures out if it is legal to kill him?
February 4th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
Obama managed to make Limbaugh look prescient! Good Job Democrats! You made a fat, retarded drug addict look like he’s Edgar Fucking Casey.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Or, more recently, and less hypothetically, how Roosevelt ordered Knox, Nimitz and Hawlsey to take out out Yamamoto.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Vengeance
February 4th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
See, Fostert is the first Obama-Youth member to stand up and Say Heil!
Congrats, scumbag. To bad he won’t put your ass on his list.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
I think it was pretty interesting that the only Monarchical power a President has is the power to be completely merciful and to turn someone out of prison. To me, that said a lot of how the founders imagined our nation–the one thing they liked about the King was he could issue get-out-of-jail-free cards. In a time of debtor’s prison, that they’d want to keep this power speaks highly of them. It speaks less highly of modern Presidents that they’ve used it to reward cronies and political friends.
The other stuff you write about seems to have been generated by loopholes in the Constitution due to how American society ran in those days–you didn’t have any limits set on intel-gathering institutions because, well, they didn’t really exist. There are significant limits on his powers of surveillance and detainment and militarism–Congress is supposed to start all wars, nobody can write writs of attainder, there’s a need for warrants, etc. The thing is that Congress has chosen to abdicate a great deal of its power to the executive, and every time there’s a new kind of surveillance the courts decide that the rule is basically “the executive can do whatever he wants unless Congress passes a law stating otherwise” instead of “the Constitution says the President’s powers here are inherently limited.”
I really don’t blame the founders for this one. The rules they wrote really constrained the President. I suppose the only mistake they made was not paying enough attention to Caesar–the position of tyrant is extremely dangerous. They probably should not have created it, and they should have vested power with the parties as parlimentary systems do.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Last time I checked, a Japanese Admiral was not, in fact, an American citizen. Nice try nazi-fuckwad.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
Well, Zionists, of course, have assassination squads reporting directly to their PM. That’s just our judeochristian way, I suppose.
autoit 0.376605750992894
February 4th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
And yeah, you stand up and defend summary execution and you’re a nazi. They didn’t start at killing people by the hundreds either. You’re walking down that road, I see no reason to wait for you to start goostepping. You don’t need a duck to quack before you can call it a fucking duck.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Ah, I thought we were a little overdue for our Weekly Freakout.
So if an American citizen joined our enemy forces in a war, we’d have to give them due process on the battlefield? That sounds complicated.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
This argument would make sense if the constitution gave the President the right to kill American citizens.
How many times does Matt have to type the phrase “de facto” before you get that he’s NOT talking about powers conferred by the Constitution, soullite?
Seems to me your outrage is widely shared here (and it obviously is by our host) so it’s unclear to me who the “dickless moral-retards” you’re screaming at are.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
I second Rob @ 7. Congress has essentially abdicated all responsibility for foreign policy, a reality severely exacerbated post-9/11, and the current judiciary has more or less conceded this point as well in granting the president extremely wide leeway in conducting any operations deemed to be related to national security.
Moreover, how could the Founders have possibly foreseen the reach of 21st century American military power? I doubt many of them intended for the Constitution to last a century beyond its ratification, much less remain as unchanged as it has.
spokeytown @ 4 correctly notes the impact of collusion, rather than separation, of powers – a reality unique to recent history, at least insofar as the massive effect that this collusion has on policy.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
This is not talking about assassinating Americans domestically. It’s talking about Yemen and the case where an American born Al-Queda member got killed in a drone strike.
However I feel about the global police reigning down hellfire missiles from drones, it would be completely, fucking absurd for them to be about to do it and then someone runs in and says “Wait, one of them has a U.S. passport” then they all stop and do what?
February 4th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
A bunch of dirty, dingy desert dogs aren’t a threat to this Republic. Obama starting up deathsquads are. You don’t go back once you let that genie out of the bottle. You just expand who they are allowed to kill and how much authority they have to make that decision for themselves.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
No, Ed. You just don’t give a shit that Obama is out there murdering people. That means I don’t really have to take you lunatic argument seriously.
this isn’t about killing people that *might* be citizens. It’s about actively hunting down and killing Americans. Knowing ahead of time that they are Americans. If Obama can do that to some people, he has the power to do that to anybody he wants.
Scum. You people are absolute scum. You’re not even worth pissing on. You’re not even worth using to scrub my ass after a bad bout of diarhea.
Democrats: not even pretending to be better than Republicans anymore.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Look, I’ll grant you that I’m a bit uncomfortable with a President with unfettered power to order assassination hits, but it is not as if he is doing anything really, really, really bad…such as calling political opponents retarded.
-RPTH
February 4th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Ryan, he has to come right out and say that no, the President does not have this power, that claiming such a power is evil and tyrannical.
Basically, if you still support Obama at this point you’re a moral retard and you have no dick because you’re not man. You’re Obama’s fucking bitch.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
SteveAR: Dude, the US wrote the constitution of Japan. Doesn’t your history book have an index?
February 4th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Why is it any better or worse for Obama to be assassinating Americans in Yemen?
February 4th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
All American citizens need to do to avoid being targeted by flying killer robots is to follow the simple rule not meet with people who advocate armed violence against the United States.
If you were one of those Americans who joined the Werschmact, you shouldn’t have been surprised if the Allies started shooting at you indiscriminately.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
The checks and balances rely on each branch of the government actually exercising the powers given to them in the Constitution. If Congress does not use its power of impeachment, even in the face of high crimes by the executive, then the power of impeachment becomes irrelevant and the balance of our government is affected.
Current precedent is that alleged perjury in a civil trial is an impeachable offense. Assassinating an American citizen would certainly be seen as more of a crime than that. The criminal penalties for arranging a willful murder (essentially life in prison) are higher than those for perjury (up to 25 years in prison).
February 4th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
These people aren’t “political opponents”. They are the enemies of peace, freedom and democracy. They are criminals. They are fascists. They are sub-human scum not fit to breath the air meant for real people. Things like Fostert and Ed Marshall are the closest thing you’re ever going to find to a monster in real life.
They are not desperate fools without benefit of a modern society lashing out at the world, they are relatively educated individuals who have had every advantage in life. They know better, they just don’t care.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Death squads like the US military? (Militaries are for killing people, remember.) I don’t think Obama started that up. There’s a principle that it’s “war” when you tell an army to kill a thousand people, but it’s “assassination” when you tell an army to kill one person.
Who you turn your military against has always been a practical question, not a principled one. Obama is hardly the first president to ever turn the military on a couple Americans.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Yes, assination squads are clearly impeachable offenses. If The President declares himself a king, he isn’t merely disagreeing with other people. He is commiting treason. He has a role under the constitution, and this is no minor overstep. It isn’t even a major one. Its setting the constitution aside entirely.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Chet, I’m sorry that you’re so blinded by the awesomeness of Obama’s cock that you fail to understand the differences between a declared war and a targeted assassination of an American citizen. Thats really not an argument a sane person would make.
It’s an argument of a cult-member who just saw their cult leader revealed to be a child molestor: Obviously reality is wrong and he’s really a great guy!
February 4th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
You really need to explain why hunting and killing people with predators on the other side of the world was apparently OK yesterday, and today it’s the fourth reich if one of them flew over from Boulder to join the fight.
That or apologize for being a complete asshole.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Soullite, even Greenwald admits that ordering the killing of American citizens on an “active battlefield” is perfectly within the President’s right.
So it comes down to the definition of the “battlefield”, and that’s been pretty much the whole problem for the last 8 years, no?
February 4th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
The President does not have this authority and this post STRONGLY implies that he does.
The president has the power to do exactly that.
Virtually unchecked.
Witness the phone tapping of George W. Bush.
The people imprisoned, tortured, and killed under his aegis and at his pleasure.
And the lack of consequences for George W. Bush.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Like I said, predictable that the Obamatons would consider Obama’s political career more important than the country. They are filth, human wreckage. A lot of people are too weak to admit they are wrong and to point out when someone they used to admire turns out to be a shitbag.
I used to think Obama was just a worthless charltan, but he’s clearly an insane monster.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
We also need more impeachments. Nixon quite possibly bestowed the biggest favor ever upon the executive branch by resigning rather than face a full fledged inquiry and impeachment by Congress, which I believe would have set a strong precedent for congressional oversight of severe executive malfeasance (lying about sex does not count). We’ve essentially set up a political system where there are zero consequences for presidents and executive officers who break the law.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
How does Yglesias know the U.S. hasn’t advised countries to imitate our form of government? Just because the types of governments that those countries implemented weren’t (aren’t) like ours doesn’t mean the U.S. didn’t try to have them imitate ours.
Oh, if only we had any records such as copious government archives full of correspondence and memos and numerous academic histories of what the US advised these countries during that time! Oh, if only any of the diplomats and statesmen from that time had written memoirs! Oh, if only newspapers had existed to report what was going on! Oh, if only some of these events had occurred within the last twenty years so that some of the people involved were still alive!
But, alas, we lack all such things, and so can only scratch our heads and guess what went on in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1990s.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
No, he doesn’t Jeffrey. No more than a rapist has the right to rape a 13 year old girl just because he’s strong enough to hold her down.
That you fail to understand that is a large part of why you’re a dickless moral leper.
Conservatives are right, you are all moral relativists.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
from Greenwald’s column
The body of American jusirprudence does *not* hold that there is first ammendment right to advocate violence*, and is in fact one of the more famous exceptions to the first ammendment enshrined in the precedents of case law.
*that is to say non-government violence, of course. No press was ever shut down for advocating war, except for maybe Benjamin Bache’s
February 4th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
JW, first: yes. on an active battlefield. There are rules of war.
However, your remark that they are ‘open to interpretation’ indicates that you basically belief this gives him the right to murder people anywhere at any time. It’s obvious because there have been rules of war for century, and it seems unlikely that nobody ever got around to defining the term ‘battlefield’.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
you realize, this really doesn’t have much to do with the constitution, right?
to the extent that this document has any determinate meaning, and to the extent that we can discern it by consulting, e.g. the other writings of its authors, such as the federalist papers, it is quite clear that the constitution does not grant the president any such powers.
what you are seeing is the extra-constitutional development of a consensus among the governing class, that presidents who exceed their constitutional authority will not be called to account.
unless they are democrats, of course.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
The President as assassin. Interesting concept.
I can just see Obama now, sitting on the roof of the White House with a sandwich and a high-powered rifle, using the tourists lined up at the White House Gate as target practice.
WHAT A FUCKED UP COUNTRY THIS IS! What a pathetic joke of a nation. First Citizens United, now this, and no one gives a fuck. America’s finest minds discuss Constitutional quirks while the President is given powers to kill Americans and the Supreme Court hands the Democracy over to corporations.
Man, am I glad my Dad is dead, otherwise I would have had to kill him. No way would I have allowed him to see this.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
Like I said, you’re all insane fascists. I know you don’t like hearing this, and you probably don’t realize that all other fascists came up with nice, legitimate sounding reasons for their deathsquads and extrajudicial killings too. Those were all bullshit, and so are yours.
I’ve never heard of a good reason to set up a deathsquad. Never heard of them stopping at their original targets either. How do you think the wingnuts will define ‘terrorist’ and ‘battlefield’ exactly?
You’re all dumb fucking monkeys, because you can’t comprehend of anything beyond 5 years from today. That you fail to see where this is going to go is laughable, because this will come back and bite you. Fucking. Retards.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Is anyone else curious what happened to “soullite” to make him this angry?
He’s clearly got some serious sexuality issues (how many times did he describe his nameless but seemingly numerous foes as “dickless”?), major paranoia (not so much about the executive overreach that the post was about, as about the nation as we know it falling apart), and other related ailments.
I’m no psychiatrist, so I couldn’t even begin to guess.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Jesse, what the fuck happened to you that you think it’s okay for Obama to murder Americans on his say so?
Really, thats the question here. Why are you a fucking psychopath. I love this country. You clearly do not. I want a better world, you clearly want a worse one.
When did supporting deathsquads become a liberal position, exactly?
February 4th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Oh, that’s right. When Obama said it did. Silly me, must be a delusional lunatic because I think you don’t murder people. Stupid, crazy morality.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Oh, and in case any one cares about the Constitutional question that this post was about, it seems to me there’s a pretty straightforward answer:
Congress should declare war on Al Qaeda specifically. This will give the Executive all the powers it really needs (ie, to kill Al Qaeda members, even if they happen to have been born in the USA; to detain Al Qaeda members even if they can’t be convicted of any crimes), while denying it the ability to use these powers against innocent individuals (non-Al Qaeda).
February 4th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
I just wanted to highlight this as the dumbest thing I’ve read today. From commenter “Al”:
“If you have a terrorist that needs assassinating, what does the extreme Left thinks we ought to do – have Congress give its approval via a bill passed with 60 votes and then have judicial process to see if it is OK? What’s the terrorist gonna do – sit around waiting for three years while the government figures out if it is legal to kill him?”
Hmm, let’s put our thinking caps on. How could we solve that problem?
In a related note, what does the extreme Left think we ought to do about people who commit crimes? We can’t arrest them until a bill passes with 60 votes?
February 4th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
is this one of those things some president will be apologizing about forty years from now?
isn’t killing people accused or bad things kind of worse than torturing them?
“…I was always raised to appreciate the “out of control spies” genre of movies…”
just bought a copy of “orions belte” (scandalously still not available on DVD in NTSC format but you can get a used copy on tape or a multi-region player
February 4th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
I call you dickless because most of you are clearly male, and that’s most likely to be percieved as a serious insult to your complete lack of masculinity. Really, you’re not men. You’re not women either, you’re no kind of adult at all. You’re a worthless little worm that crawls on it’s belly and eat’s the shit passed down to you by the biggest animal you can find.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Blake: Arrest them. It’s not exactly a hard position to come to. It’s what you do to criminals. If you have to kill them durring the aprehension, that’s unfortunate. It is also very different from flying an unmanned drone out there and murdering them and their whole family, which is what this is actually going to boil down to.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
The pardon power pretty much gives the president and his cronies any power they want, because all they have to do is do something illegal that the president wanted to do and then he can pardon them. Problem solved. So even if the Constitution doesn’t give the president the power to assassinate American citizens (or anyone else), and it surely does not, the president can do it anyway, or order someone else to do it, and then pardon all involved. We need to get rid of the pardon if we want the Constitution or any of our laws to have real teeth.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Well, I’m reluctant to even try, but just in case it helps you calm down:
Soullite, no one thinks its ok for any President to kill people because he feels like it. No one thinks death squads would be ok. This is not a position supported by anyone (not even neo-conservatives, I think, although sometimes their positions have the effect of supporting such things).
There are no deathsquads. Really, read the article Matt linked to – there’s no suggestion that President Obama has ordered anyone to be killed, and certainly not that he’s started deathsquads. What’s at issue here is that the National Intelligence Director acknowledged that:
A) In the course of our global war on “terror”, we target specific individuals for attack (ie, “assassination”, although this is a mild stretching of the term)
B) Some of these individuals are known to have been born in the USA, and thus are American citizens.
C) When we target Americans, the CIA can’t just kill them without approval the way they’d do with, say, Osama bin Laden. Instead, they’ve got to get the President to specifically ok it.
Now, that raises all sorts of questions about where the slippery slope of executive power could lead. And Matt’s right to point out that this isn’t something that’s checked by anyone outside of the Executive Branch, while much more mundane things like carbon pricing are basically subject to an insurmountable series of checks and balances.
But that’s all. It’s not the end of the world. Just a nasty dilemma in our war-on-terror world.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Jesse, nobody has the power to give the President the ability to kill people, so they have no ability to restrict it. That’s how the law works. No law saying ‘you can only kill guilty people’ (gee, if why bother with trials. we already know who is guilty. They’re the ones with the brown skin!) because congress can not give the power to kill guilty people to the President.
Really, you don’t even have to understand the law or the constitution to grasp that. It’s intuitive.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
I’m done arguing with hitler Jr, this is no more up for debate than torture is. You’re a piece of shit, but I’d imagine you already know that.
What’s next? Date Rape: Not the end of the world, just a nasty dillema when you want to get laid!
February 4th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
One more brick on the road to Obama’s failed Presidency and America’s failed statehood.
I did want him to succeed, or I wouldn’t have worked so hard for him both here and in the real world. A lot of you fail to remember that because a lot of you just materialized a month after the election. Strange, that. I’m just not susceptible to cults of personality or social pressure, and as a result, I don’t bother sticking by evil lunatics like many of you do.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Congress passed an authorization to use military force. I think they shouldn’t have (re: Iraq), and ought to have actually declared war on Al Qaeda (a legitimate enemy), but the fact is they passed this authorization.
What do you think “Authorization to use Military Force” means, soullite? It means the Executive Branch can go kill people (”war” in layman’s terms).
That’s why this is happening. So, yes, they gave the President (Bush, by the way; the power simply has extended to Obama) this power.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Blake: Arrest them. It’s not exactly a hard position to come to.
Uh, dude, it’s pretty clear that’s exactly Blake’s point. In that last couple of days (or maybe longer) you’ve completely lost the ability to detect sarcasm.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
soullite—deep breaths, deep breaths. Take a break.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
The framers worried about this very issue. The nonpartisan Washington was their model. The potential for abuse by a future President who lacked Washington’s public virtue scared them. South Carolina Framer Pierce Butler, writing to a relative in May 1788, had said that the powers of the presidency were “greater than I was disposed to make them” and that “they would not have been so great had not many of the members [of the Convention] cast their eyes toward General Washington as President.”
February 4th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Honestly, the U.S. citizenship issue is a complete red herring. If we’re at war with you, your citizenship is irrelevant in regards to the President’s war powers.
I would think the Civil War would have made that perfectly obvious.
Now, if you don’t think that the President has the right to have people assassinated in their beds… that’s one thing… but it has nothing to do with whether they are a US citizen.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Honestly, the U.S. citizenship issue is a complete red herring. If we’re at war with you, your citizenship is irrelevant in regards to the President’s war powers.
That kind of talk is likely to summon he-who-shall-not-be-named (but is named Paul Donnelly).
February 4th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
J.W.-
I almost agree with you about citizenship being a red herring, but the nasty problem here is that we aren’t in a declared war with a specific enemy – instead we’re in an “authorized” use of force against “terrorists”.
Since “terrorists” is a vague term, some people have felt it appropriate (and reasonably so, I guess) to draw distinctions between what we’re doing to non-American supposed-terrorists and American supposed-terrorists. For example, no one seems to mind the NSA monitoring communications in Pakistan, but in Peoria that’s more uncomfortable.
Now, there’s no reason to think we’re currently killing Americans in the USA (I haven’t noticed any Reapers overhead, have you?), but if we’re killing them in other countries, we’ve taken one more step down a slippery slope to a very bad place. Which I think makes it worthwhile to consider how we clarify the Executive’s powers in this fight, before some really bad President starts using them for nefarious ends.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
I agree with you 100% about the vagueness of the definition being a HUGE problem… but clearing that up strikes me a something Congress should have done years ago. The Supreme Court seems relatively comfortable with the way war powers are being used, so I don’t think we’re going to get much help there. So unless Congress fixes the definition of who we’re at war with exactly and what the parameters are… I think it’s hard to argue that ordering Predator drone strikes on suspected terrorists (US citizen or not) sleeping in their beds, isn’t completely within the President’s powers.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
As I’ve said before, it’s worth pointing out that the founders’ vision of the presidency was actually a lot closer to that of a constitutional monarch than chief executive. The model was the British king as of 1789 who was of course more powerful than the modern queen but less powerful than a modern-day president. The main driver of policy was expected to be the House of Representatives. Had our traditions evolved in that fashion, we’d probably have a sort of parliamentary system.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:57 pm
I think N’s point in #15 can be summed up as:
The reason why things are this way is because foreigners can’t vote, and the people who can vote don’t for the most part care about foreigners, at least not to the extent that they care about them and theirs.
February 4th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Matt, this is only true if you ignore the Constitution entirely. Bush kidnapped and tortured people in violation of our Constitution. Congress is supposed to be the body that declares war, so Clinton’s attack on Serbia was likewise unconstitutional. And if Barack Obama wants to issue a kill order on someone or other, it’s violating several different aspects of the Constitution.
We just choose to ignore it.
There are many structural flaws in our Constitution. Granting the President the authority to kill anyone he wants at will isn’t one of them– it’s not in there! We’ve just abdicated checks on the power of the executive.
If Barack Obama ordered DADT down by executive fiat, the army would carry it out. He could claim it as his authority as Commander in Chief. He’d get away with it. That doesn’t mean that it’s kosher under the Constitution.
February 4th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Jesus, 26 posts from Soullite so far, every one of them frothing at the mouth. Ahh yes, this is why I like discussion boards, so I can exchange ideas with the other learned scholars.
Thing of it is, I actually agree with the guy even though he’s one of the biggest jerks on this site–not with the “you’re all dickless Hitler youth shit eating worms” sentiment, but with the general “it’s terrible for the President to be offing Americans” sentiment. There’s no judicial review, no Congressional approval, nothing but the president’s own whims to decide who gets it and who doesn’t.
Whenever this happens, we will never be talking about anyone who isn’t a young radical on the fringe of society, traipsing around with like minded radical groups. There will never be a Hellfire missile strike on normal middle-aged folks in Des Moines. But that’s the thing; our Constitutional freedoms give us the right to, among other things, traipse around with various radical groups, and fuck anyone who suggests otherwise. If the groups are actually committing violent acts, they should expect violent responses from the US government (although if you’re a Miami Cuban terrorist, or a New York Irish or Israeli terrorist, you will get US government support instead of a Hellfire missile). But where does this stop? Does Earth First get rocketed? Their rhetoric is pretty radical–but so was Thomas Jefferson’s. You have the right to be a hellraiser, even a misguided one.
On a related note, I think 10, 40, and 49 have huge points about impeachment. It’s not a check on presidential abuses if it’s never used. Reagan should have been impeached, and certainly Bush Jr. They were war criminals, full stop. This country actually has a ways to go before it becomes governed by the rule of law. But I’m afraid it was always thus; presidents have abused power for about as long as the US has been around, and Congress is full of people who are friends with the president and want to be the next president. Judges and prosecutors tend to get very gun shy when they have an elected official in their sights. Certainly our system has worked better than, say, Peru’s, and has kept us closer to true rule of law, but our various rulers are flawed humans easily corrupted. And we haven’t figured out a way to make it stop. The abuses have become much worse in the past few years, and it’s greatly distressing to see Obama–a Constitutional law scholar–refuse to rule things like torture, assassination, and indefinite detention without charge, trial, or access to lawyers, as beyond the pale of acceptable behavior.
I suppose it’s not surprising though. Declaring those things to be beyond the pale would require facing up to the fact that Bush Jr. was a war criminal and deserves prison. That was never going to happen, not with all the panic and corruption that’s been going around.
February 4th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
[...] comments to my post on the bizarre mismatch between the President’s largely unconstrained authority to use lethal force and his sharply [...]
February 4th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
But it’s nice to see Matt has no problems with the President murdering Americans with no due process.
He never said that. He said that it didn’t surprise him, not that he was okay with it.
February 4th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Congress should declare war on Al Qaeda specifically. This will give the Executive all the powers it really needs (ie, to kill Al Qaeda members, even if they happen to have been born in the USA; to detain Al Qaeda members even if they can’t be convicted of any crimes), while denying it the ability to use these powers against innocent individuals (non-Al Qaeda).
The enabling resolution of Operation Enduring Freedom passed after 9/11 does this. (but is broader and doesn’t limit itself to Al Queda)
February 4th, 2010 at 7:13 pm
Well, our government was formed when it was faced with competitors who had no such checks and balances. So all the checks were developed for use domestically, where they would not interfere in external competition.
Unfortunately for us, the world has changed so that domestic economic policies are what competes internationally, not the ability to move ships and men around the world.
So we need to change with the times. Thankfully, the founding fathers gave us a way to do that, too. If only we had the will to do so.
February 4th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Re: Well, the Constitution sez that only Congress can declare war. It wasn’t anywhere near as easy to deploy troops halfway around the world in 1789 as it is now
The Pesidents stretched their War Powers from the very first. Jefferson (of all people) didn’t bother to get a formal declaration of war agianst the barbary states before sending the navy against them– though to be fair they had declared war formally on the US. And the various Indian Wars were largely undeclared too.
February 4th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
First, it seems a few commenters here (like Ed) should read the article. This isn’t about Americans killed on the “battlefield” of the ‘War on Terror’ (the world?) as “collateral damage”. This is about the CIA and the Pentagon having a “hit list” of people to assassinate wherever they are, even asleep with their families.
Once again: the CIA and some special forces are “allowed” to kill a specific American individual, by any means necessary. Just like in the movies, except it is not super-secret anymore; instead some White House flacks are bragging about it on the record.
Second, one commenter at Salon made an interesting remark: it seems pretty clear murdering Americans is not something allowed by the Constitution. Even if Congress won’t do anything about it, couldn’t a family member of this cleric sue government officials for conspiracy to commit murder? (or murder if the hit job is carried out)
Imagine if the Supreme Court had to answer the question: can the President have Americans assassinated without a trial?
February 4th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
I did read the article, you might have wanted to read Eli Lake’s piece that it was all based on. It’s not “anywhere”, it’s the exact same thing that’s been going on (or at least admitted to) since 9/11. They are drawing up lists of targets they believe are planning to kill Americans and killing them. We’ve been doing this every day for years.
The wrinkle here was that one of the targets was an American attached to a group of AQ in Yemen. It’s happened before, they killed a man named Ruben Shumpert who was out on bail on gun charges and fled to Somalia where he called the FBI and told them he had joined up with AQ there and was going to destroy America.
I don’t know how we got in the business of killing foreign nationals with drones either, but what exactly did anyone expect to happen? He’s an American so we are going to do what? Send him a summons?
February 4th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
I don’t know how we got in the business of killing foreign nationals with drones either, but what exactly did anyone expect to happen? He’s an American so we are going to do what? Send him a summons?
No. And we wouldn’t send him a summons on U.S. soil either. Here, we would send a group of sworn lawmen to arrest his sorry ass using whatever force is necessary, or, if the resistance they encounter warrants it, shoot him in the face.
Now, once you get outside the US, you need to dig into the problems of trying to bring these people in under local law. But the complexities that involves shouldn’t lead us to throw up our hands and make a list of Americans to shoot hellfire missiles at . . .
February 4th, 2010 at 9:45 pm
What you’re forgetting (and what every Congress since the Truman era has worked mightily to ignore) is that the Congress can put a stop to an imperial president pretty quickly – all it needs to do is stop funding, and all that requires is a simple majority vote, because budgetary matters can bypass filibusters.
February 4th, 2010 at 11:58 pm
This is a case of technology running ahead of the law. Before intelligence would get a hunch there were enemy troops (call ‘em terrorists) operating out of a group of houses. In WW II, flattened, NOW. By Vietnam, JAGs might have been called in, a discussion on Geneva Conventions, military requirements, collateral damage assessed, place gets struck by a laser bomb.
Now, a UAV hovers overhead, video is taken showing evidence on a continuing basis of enemy action, everyone is identified, passport numbers run. JAGs decide a strike is legal. A technician 3000 miles away launches a Hellfire–GONE!
Technology drives the outcomes, just like the police using photo cameras for speed enforcement
When faced with a threat to Americans, any President will kill identified enemy. He has to to stay in office. Look at Clinton letting OBL out of Sudan; imagine the uproar among pious libs if Obama let one of these guys go and he then created another 9/11
February 5th, 2010 at 2:33 am
[...] That seems to be what Matthew Yglesias is getting at in what should have been the real name for that class, Our Strange Constitution: [...]
February 5th, 2010 at 2:45 am
There’s a pretty wide swath of territory between letting an American citizen with terrorist ties go and putting him on a list for targeted assassinations. For instance, there would be an outcry if we just let an accused murderer roam the streets, but there would also be an outcry if we had snipers on the rooftops to drop people accused of felonies on sight.
February 5th, 2010 at 4:05 am
Like Ed Marshall (88) I don’t see any difference in assassinating a US national vs. any other individual. A murder is a murder.
autoit 0.221741596003994
February 5th, 2010 at 7:07 am
Mike K, yes. Assassinating people is just like using cameras to get people who run redlights.
Nothing insane about that!
I can’t wait to watch you lose your minds when Obama loses in two years. 10-to-1 these same scumfuckers start crying about the terrible, out of control executive and how evil Republican abuses are. Because the people here are liars and shitbags.
Worthless little monkeys too busy jerking themselves off to feel the tiger’s breath.
February 5th, 2010 at 7:12 am
As opposed to you Spokey, who feels the only thing wrong with this post is my responses?
You don’t have the right to criticize me, primitive. You don’t have the right to criticize anyone. I don’t give a shit who you are or what you’ve done with your life. You will never be my equal, you’re proving that right now. You’re the same kind of scumbag that has afflicted our species since the first fucking primate that murdered his fellow to rape his mate. A worthless sub-human. Go crawl back into your fucking cave you little piece of shit. You don’t get a substantive response, you murderous bastard.
February 5th, 2010 at 7:14 am
Except Ed Marshall thinks murdering people is awesome. Probably jacks off to sniper videos and snuff films.
February 5th, 2010 at 7:21 am
Well, I was for the assassination of anyone the president wants, but soullite’s string of “dickless retard” comments has changed my mind. Cheerfully amended. Thanks!
February 5th, 2010 at 7:25 am
This is why I don’t argue intelligently, DTM. These shitbags can’t be reasoned with. It’s like trying to explain morality to a chimp. Their minds aren’t capable of grasping these concepts.
Better to treat them how they deserve to be treated. When they can grow up and get passed their little tough-guy murder fantasies I’ll treat them like something worth talking to. Right now they are barely worth pissing on.
I act like this because I hate you. I hate you because you’re evil. I’m sure you can think up some bullshit justifications for why you’re evil. In my experience, scummy bastards like you manage to convince yourselves that anything is “the right thing to do”. I’ve heard people justify everything, every horrible little thing. Every time it sounds the same: “Waaah, it’s not my fault! I had to do it!”
February 5th, 2010 at 7:28 am
Jmack, yes., calling you dickless retards is really comparable to murdering people.
Try again shitbag. I’m not trying to change your minds. Your minds can’t be changed. If you were capable of reason, you wouldn’t think this is a good idea to begin with. You’re only capable of rationalization, which means no amount of reason would ever save you.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:27 am
Shitbag? Well, again I’m convinced.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:32 am
Jmack, yes., calling you dickless retards is really comparable to murdering people.
You are very, very stupid.
February 5th, 2010 at 9:12 am
This is hilarious.
February 5th, 2010 at 9:16 am
When my children were small, my wife and I agreed that corporal punishment was not an option for us. We used timeout. However, when my toddler started to step into the street, my practice was to tackle her with great (make believe) violence and then commiserate with her about that dangerous, scary street.
Which is to say, sometimes the situation calls for violence and fast action. A major premise of our government is that the executive branch is there to provide the context for a president to take fast, decisive action. It is bad when that means an ongoing practice of stupid, decisive action as we saw with George Bush but that doesn’t reduce the value of the idea.
Sometimes we need fast, decisive action. If it turns out that the preemptory killing of terrorists happens very often, then we will want to find out if “fast, decisive action” has turned into a policy that should be subject to review, so be it. In the meantime, I am feeling threatened by the desire to scrutinize every single tidbit being processed in our governmental sausage factory.
ps, It occurs to me that the fact that the president has the ability to kill you might serve as a useful deterrent to the election of another venal idiot like George Bush. There’s another upside.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:04 am
It’s not about “approving” of unchecked executive power in the security domain, that power does not exist under the Constitution. http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?59+Duke+L.+J.+595+pdf.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:19 am
The neocons are hot to assassinate Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, the cleric who inspired both the Fort Hood shooter and the would-be Christmas Day plane bomber, and who refers to Israel as the “Cancer of the World.”
Israel’s atrocities and war crimes perpetrated on the Palestinian Arabs has long produced a backlash against Israel’s supporter, the U.S. Both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9/11, (see The 9/11 Commission Report p.147) and his nephew Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, (whose mother is Palestinian), point to our mindless support of Israel’s brutal occupations as their motivation. The Fort Hood terrorist, Major Nidal Hasan, is of Palestinian origin, as was Humam al-Balawi, the Jordanian triple agent who blew up the CIA agents in Afghanistan.
Al-Balawi had featured the Gaza and Israeli/Palestinian conflict on his jihadi Web site (The New York Times 1/10/10). He had worked in a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Zarqa, Jordan, where “thousands of Palestinians live in poverty”, and he was outraged at Israeli brutality against the Palestinians (Yahoo News 1/9/10). Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the assassinated Palestinian leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, was also from Zarqa.
The Zionist-owned and dominated American news media of course never dwell on the Israel connection. They spin the news so as to concentrate on blaming security deficits rather than blaming our misguided foreign policy which supports Israeli atrocities and inspires terrorism around the globe. Americans are kept in the dark as we are urged to fight unnecessary war after unnecessary war, thus bankrupting our country and murdering our youth.
February 5th, 2010 at 10:48 am
[...] Matthew Yglesias writes: If the President wants to do something like implement a domestic policy proposal he campaigned on—charge polluters for global warming emissions, for example—he faces a lot of hurdles. He needs majority support on a House committee or three. He also needs majority support on a Senate committee or three. Then he needs to get a majority in the full House of Representatives. And then he needs to de facto needs a 60 percent supermajority in the Senate. And then it’s all subject to judicial review. [...]
February 5th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Here’s what Dennis the Peasant thinks of you, Matt (I agree with him):
“Little Matty has been at the forefront of Progressive musing about just how, well, badly designed our Constitution really is. You see, in his eyes health care reform didn’t die due to a thousand Obama/Democratic fuckups, it died because the framers of the Constitution didn’t get it quite right. I find this attitude aggravating when coming from a 20-something punk with a degree in Philosophy, which is what Matty is. Read enough of the boy and you’ll get the sense that Yglesias regrets not being around during the first seven days, because had he been there, he’d have been able to pass along a number of useful insights and helpful tips to God.”
February 5th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
After all of the name-calling in the thread,
I haven’t seen one of our cadre of tighty-righties suggest that we hold George W responsible for the murders committed under his watch.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:28 pm
[...] even slightly surprised to find out that the Obama administration has some kind of process in place to assassinate American citizens who it’s decided are in cahoots with [...]
February 6th, 2010 at 3:44 am
I sincerely hope Obama orders a drone strike to take out sotrite
so that he is vindicated. From fanboy#1 to wouldn’t piss on Obama if he was on fire in one year
February 6th, 2010 at 4:16 am
After reading over soullite’s comments, I was compelled to suggest to a few of you that responding to them was allowing a Neanderthal to occupy your comparatively valuable time.
But I have to admit, despite the man’s vitriolic love of phallic-related tirades, or his inability to see in himself a comically myopic Napoleon complex, he has a valid point many of you seem reluctant to admit:
We all called Bush and his neo-con think tank hawkish fascists, yet Obama, for all his wonderful talk of righting those grievous wrongs, retains some of the abuses we now seem to think reasonable and justified.
As the Times Op piece aptly quoted Greenwald:
“Even if you’re someone who does want the President to have the power to order American citizens killed without a trial by decreeing that they are Terrorists (and it’s worth remembering that if you advocate that power, it’s going to be vested in all Presidents, not just the ones who are as Nice, Good, Kind-Hearted and Trustworthy as Barack Obama), shouldn’t there at least be some judicial approval required? Do we really want the President to be able to make this decision unilaterally and without outside checks? Remember when many Democrats were horrified (or at least when they purported to be) at the idea that Bush was merely eavesdropping on American citizens without judicial approval? Shouldn’t we be at least as concerned about the President’s being able to assassinate Americans without judicial oversight? That seems much more Draconian to me.”
Good show, soullite. Now please see a doctor about your blood pressure, and maybe take a writing course on how to make your work more… substantive.
February 6th, 2010 at 6:00 am
But I have to admit, despite the man’s vitriolic love of phallic-related tirades, or his inability to see in himself a comically myopic Napoleon complex, he has a valid point many of you seem reluctant to admit:
soullite is a woman, I think.
February 6th, 2010 at 6:02 am
American scientists are in cahoots with research stolen by the C.I.A.:
Yes, my Dear, here is a summary about worldwide C.I.A. university espionage!
“University Spy – A True Story”
The C.I.A.’s covert action arm has ended up as America‘s extra-curricular Education Ministry and universities around the world have little recourse!
Behavioral science teaches that small changes in a heterosexual man’s sex-life can have large and unsavory effects on keeping horrific secrets!
These all-out investigative interviews will plunge you, the reader, into the murk of the abnormal psychology and mind boggling career of W. B. Paterson from hell-bent taxi driver to hysterical C.I.A. Chief-of-university-spies!
Malicious Chief W. B. Paterson is the inheritor of American multi-billion dollar conglomerate Paterson Inc., a globally operating university supplier which doubles as a C.I.A. espionage contractor. Never, ever trust an American!
This emotional zeitgeist-book is scripted on man-to-man pillow interviews with the coarse Chief Walt Blair Paterson, a source of untreated and disease-laden sewer language and behavior, stranger than fiction. The fat-cat attacks academics with racial and religious hate-speech as if suffering from multiple mental illnesses!
Not even my diplomatic skills were good enough to put an end to his temper tantrums. Let‘s go for an audio-visit to one of the Chief’s great moments – and I promise he never used more lofty cross-references: “University people are late-term abortions who crawl out of classrooms“, he screamed, grandly, with all the subtleties of a rhino!
As is becoming for an objective reporter, I use the method of dramatizing and narrating each authentic quotation from the Chief, reflecting the ugly history of Paterson Inc. and America – the Can’t Do Nation!
The disgusting behind-the-scenes tales are based on ‘embedded’ rent-boy reporting at its best, serving up from the bedside the whole truth about the C.I.A.’s university espionage brigades. It’s scary, very scary!
The unvarnished truth was spilled while the Chief wobbled back and forward like a drunken tip-over doll – his insufferable lips loosened by gallons of whisky!
The juicy revelations of the Chief going anal are off the record; Walt Blair Paterson’s real name, gonzo company, position and location were changed and rendered anonymous – to protect my ’deep-throat’ for legal reasons!
Paranoid and violent U.S. university espionage is closely related to institutional brutality. Haunting American abuse of power has reached a critical mass and is the central theme of this book. Will it come to the point that battered students call for ’social unrest’ at beleaguered universities in opposition to the academic waterboarding by Paterson Inc.?
Every Paterson Inc. teaching tool sold at universities bears the chill of a torture whip on the back of a kidnapped victim in a secret C.I.A. jail anywhere around the world. Saddam‘s torture chambers were multiplied, put under new U.S. management and staffed with perverted, sex-starved male and female Americans!
C.I.A. espionage contractors such as Paterson Inc. are NOT SUBJECT to the Freedom of Information Act!
An obscure law allows the C.I.A. to block all congressional and public inquiries into the secret files, the budget, the number of agents and the entire power structure of the Pater$on Shadow Company, the recipient of vast amounts of U.S. government money!
Who are the Chief’s unpredictable Washington masters? Their names read probably like a Who is Who of instable American corporate and political power. The world’s biggest borrower is busy scrounging around the earth for more billions of dollars. America will go down in history as the country that breeds the biggest rats!
Who are the shameless American ’scholars’ and at which benighted U.S. universities do they work, these dim-wits who helped dreadful C.I.A. & Paterson to conceptualize the hellish ‘intellectual’ framework for global university espionage?
If the burly men from beastly Paterson Inc. tilted the global academic playing field in favor of U.S. scientists, and if this helps explain America’s unparalleled share of Nobel prices during that curiously energetic U.S. ’research’ period over the past five decades, synchronized with the C.I.A.’s university espionage history, then so be it!
All this I took in like a spy, interrupted only by the emasculated Chief’s demonstrations of affection and while his ungentlemanly hands fondled among my boy-pants!
This compelling study shows Paterson Inc. is unfit as a university supplier! America’s university espionage is on trial. The undeclared U.S. doctrine of large-scale targeted research theft has to be stopped with a cool ’nyet’!
As a spot of shit the ugly bedside interviews with the talkative Chief are positioned to hit the proverbial fan to spread his vulgar whispers fast and far!
Yours, Truly
Dr. H.R. Goetting
scribd.com/doc/21672611/University-Spy
February 6th, 2010 at 6:56 am
[...] a ciudadanos de los EE.UU en el extranjero si colaboran con los terroristas conlleva un nivel de fatuidad fuera de lugar por parte de nuestro “amigo” [...]
February 6th, 2010 at 9:05 am
Soullite is a textbook troll. The 1st 5 comments s/he don’t interact with any of the ones around them or the article, they’re just inflammatory. Then, the moment someone takes the bait, chaos erupts…
February 6th, 2010 at 11:48 am
[...] this is rather weird if you think about it. Matthew Yglesias has an interesting post on the matter: But the story reflects a pretty odd feature of our political [...]
February 6th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
[...] the Presidential powers post, as I hadn’t fully realized what the concrete motivation was of Yglesias’ post. It is that the President of the United States has assumed the authority to kill American citizens [...]
February 8th, 2010 at 7:04 pm
[...] Ed Marshall Says: “This is not talking about assassinating Americans domestically. It’s talking about Yemen and the case where an American born Al-Queda member got killed in a drone strike.” [...]
February 9th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
[...] Democracy has a lot of advantages in terms of economic production. But the Civ version of democracy works the opposite way from the American version—the player remains unconstrained in his conduct of domestic affairs, but Congress likes to meddle [...]
February 11th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
[...] Matt Yglesias makes an extremely important and fundamental observation regarding our system of government: If the President wants to do something like implement a domestic policy proposal he campaigned on—charge polluters for global warming emissions, for example—he faces a lot of hurdles. He needs majority support on a House committee or three. He also needs majority support on a Senate committee or three. Then he needs to get a majority in the full House of Representatives. And then he needs to de facto needs a 60 percent supermajority in the Senate. And then it’s all subject to judicial review. [...]