{"id":184613,"date":"2012-03-06T19:56:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T00:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/03\/06\/eric-holder-argues-that-assassination-is-legal\/"},"modified":"2012-03-06T19:56:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-07T00:56:00","slug":"eric-holder-argues-that-assassination-is-legal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/03\/06\/eric-holder-argues-that-assassination-is-legal\/","title":{"rendered":"Eric Holder Argues that Assassination is Legal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeebus. It’s now OK to murder an American citizen because the President says so<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday explained why it\u2019s legal to murder people \u2014 not to execute prisoners convicted of capital crimes, not to shoot someone in self-defense, not to fight on a battlefield in a war that is somehow legalized, but to target and kill an individual sitting on his sofa, with no charges, no arrest, no trial, no approval from a court, no approval from a legislature, no approval from we the people, and in fact no sharing of information with any institutions that are not the president. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

By \u201cgovernment\u201d Holder means the president, whether President Obama or President Romney or President Santorum or any man or woman who later becomes president, and nobody else. That one person alone is to decide what is appropriate and lawful and feasible. If the Vice President thinks it is feasible to capture somene, too bad for him. He should have gotten a better job if he wanted to be a decider. If the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court thinks preaching against the United States is not a capital offense, tough tamales. He shouldn\u2019t dress in his bathrobe if he wants to be taken seriously. If the United States Congress objects that the president\u2019s \u201csurgical strikes\u201d tend to kill too many random men, women, and children, well they know what they can do: Run for president! If the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings has objections, well \u2014 Isn\u2019t that SPECIAL? And the American people? They can shut up or vote for a racist buffoon from the bad party. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But you see, this is all OK, because Barack Obama is a good guy, so no countervailing government structures, or for that matter any public access to information needs<\/a> to be allowed:<\/p>\n

A consensus has emerged during the presidency of Barack Obama. His administration is increasingly regarded as the worst on issues related to freedom of information and transparency.<\/p>\n

Today, Josh Gerstein of POLITICO has a story that gives voice to this emerging consensus, which more and more open government advocates hold despite the fact that the Obama Administration maintains it is committed to \u201copenness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gerstein\u2019s story features a quote from a Washington-based lawyer \u201cwho\u2019s been filing\u201d Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests since 1978. The lawyer, Katherine Mayer, says, \u201cObama is the sixth administration that\u2019s been in office since I\u2019ve been doing Freedom of Information Act work. \u2026 It\u2019s kind of shocking to me to say this, but of the six, this administration is the worst on FOIA issues. The worst. There\u2019s just no question about it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Think about this for a second: This is all predicated on the idea that the Executive is a good guy who won’t abuse power, and so there is no need for checks and balances.<\/p>\n

This is why I call Barack Obama the worst constitutional law professor ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeebus. It’s now OK to murder an American citizen because the President says so: Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday explained why it\u2019s legal to murder people \u2014 not to execute prisoners convicted of capital crimes, not to shoot someone in self-defense, not to fight on a battlefield in a war that is somehow legalized, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1142,971,981,970,969,972],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-civil-rights","category-civil-war","category-corruption","category-evil","category-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184613"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}