Holder: Drone Killing Americans on U.S. Soil Legal

“It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States,” Holder replied in a letter yesterday to Paul’s question about whether Obama “has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial.”

via WashingtonExaminer.com.

WTF!!

Where is the outrage?!

FREEDOM License Plate Banned in D.C.

According to the official list of banned D.C. plate combinations, it may take some extra creativity to get your idea accepted by the city’s meticulous censors. The capital city’s DMV has a 53-page list of 26,993 license plate no-no’s that prohibit everything from praising the local baseball team to expressing disgust with the Internal Revenue Service. The list was made available through a Freedom of Information Request filed by the transparency website GovernmentAttic.org.  …

Tough luck America, even “FREEDOM” won’t fly in the nation’s capital.

via Yahoo! News.

No wonder the country is in such a sorry state.

John Cusack Interviews Law Professor Jonathan Turley

TURLEY: That’s exactly right. In fact, President Obama has not only maintained the position of George W. Bush in the area of national securities and in civil liberties, he’s actually expanded on those positions. He is actually worse than George Bush in some areas.

CUSACK: Can you speak to which ones?

TURLEY: Well, a good example of it is that President Bush ordered the killing of an American citizen when he approved a drone strike on a car in Yemen that he knew contained an American citizen as a passenger. Many of us at the time said, “You just effectively ordered the death of an American citizen in order to kill someone else, and where exactly do you have that authority?” But they made an argument that because the citizen wasn’t the primary target, he was just collateral damage. And there are many that believe that that is a plausible argument.

CUSACK: By the way, we’re forgetting to kill even a foreign citizen is against the law. I hate to be so quaint…

TURLEY: Well, President Obama outdid President Bush. He ordered the killing of two US citizens as the primary targets and has then gone forward and put out a policy that allows him to kill any American citizen when he unilaterally determines them to be a terrorist threat. Where President Bush had a citizen killed as collateral damage, President Obama has actually a formal policy allowing him to kill any US citizen.

via Truth-Out.org.

We’re at the point where the far left is starting to realize that Obama is simply shredding the Constitution.  I don’t think I’ve EVER agreed with  John Cusack before but he is 100% correct here.

CUSACK: Oscar Wilde said most journalists would fall under the category of those who couldn’t tell the difference between a bicycle accident and the end of civilization. But why is it that all the journalists that you see mostly on MSNBC or most of the progressives, or so-called progressives, who believe that under Bush and Cheney and Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez these were great and grave constitutional crises, the wars were an ongoing moral fiasco — but now, since we have a friendly face in the White House, someone with kind of pleasing aesthetics and some new policies we like, now all of a sudden these aren’t crimes, there’s no crisis. Because he’s our guy? Go, team, go?

I’m not sure that he means by “Pleasing aesthetics”.  Bush was not aesthetically pleasing?  I mean, he was no George Clooney but no ogre either.  … Or is that Obama is black?  I dunno.  But not sure I care either.  Where are all the anti-war protesters nowadays?

Overall this is an amazing piece that should be required reading for everyone on the Left.  They should think about all the venom they spewed at Bush for years for acting exactly like Obama.  I’m not saying Bush had it right… far from.  But the hypocrisy on the left is unbearable.

 

No Warrant Required: The G Knows Everything About You

… by law, utilities must hand over customer records — which include any billing and payment information, phone numbers and power consumption data — to the DEA without court warrants if drug agents believe the data is “relevant” to an investigation. So the utility eventually complied, after losing a legal fight earlier this month.

Meet the administrative subpoena (.pdf): With a federal official’s signature, banks, hospitals, bookstores, telecommunications companies and even utilities and internet service providers — virtually all businesses — are required to hand over sensitive data on individuals or corporations, as long as a government agent declares the information is relevant to an investigation. Via a wide range of laws, Congress has authorized the government to bypass the Fourth Amendment — the constitutional guard against unreasonable searches and seizures that requires a probable-cause warrant signed by a judge.

In fact, there are roughly 335 federal statutes on the books (.pdf) passed by Congress giving dozens upon dozens of federal agencies the power of the administrative subpoena, according to interviews and government reports. (.pdf)  …

With the data the Alaska utility handed over, the DEA may then use further administrative subpoenas to acquire the suspected indoor-dope growers’ phone records, stored e-mails, and perhaps credit-card purchasing histories — all to build a case to acquire a probable-cause warrant to physically search their homes and businesses.

via Wired.com.

It’s out of control.

A rebellion is coming.

15 y/o Arrested 19th Time After Armed Robbery

A 15-year-old boy with nearly 20 arrests on his record has been charged with armed robbery after he held up a man near his home, police said.It was Jesus Castaneda’s 19th arrest, according to police, and his second gun-related charge. He was last arrested in August 2012 for unlawful use of a weapon, police said.

via Chicago Tribune.

Where’s Anita Alvarez on this?  Where’s the court system on this?

Why has the Tribune disabled the comments for this story?

Cook County Keeps Crazy Judge

A Democratic Party-backed judge who won re-election in November while facing battery charges was found not guilty Monday — by reason of insanity.  …

Bar associations have recommended since 2000 that Brim be tossed from her $182,000-a-year job, but voters have kept returning her to the bench. Experts have said Brim’s case highlights the difficulty of unseating a judge up for retention in Cook County.  …

Testimony revealed that Brim has been hospitalized five times after suffering mental breakdowns in the 18 years since she was first elected. In 2004, Brim was carried off the bench at a suburban courthouse after she froze while addressing her courtroom before starting the day, standing mute until someone called paramedics, her attorney said.Brim, 54, was diagnosed years ago with a bipolar type of schizoaffective disorder, which means she experiences delusions and hallucinations, psychiatrist Mathew Markos testified. The symptoms can be kept in check with medication, he testified.

via Chicago Tribune.

Really?

“The symptoms can be kept in check with medication….”  Well history suggests that either the medication doesn’t work on her or she doesn’t take her meds as prescribed.  Either way she doesn’t belong on the bench.

It’s time for the Chief Judge to step in and remove her from the bench.