Police State - Official Thread

[tu_holmes]

Because, as I explained, I do not believe that drones, at this point in time, are likely to be used in a privacy-violating manner within the continental United States, even if they were to be relatively widely deployed. At this point in time (and with their current capabilities) they are ineffective tools for the creation of a surveillance society and not particularly better than other existing methods, such as orbital platforms and closed-circuit TV cameras. Much bigger and more realistic threats to privacy exist right now. For example, the Government has been demand increased access to and control of the Internet, including insisting that backdoors be incorporated into software and hardware communications products (e.g. CALEA) to allow for efficient interception of traffic by its representatives.

And since I am orders of magnitude more likely to have my personal and private information intercepted as it flows over the Internet and/or is stored on various online service providers, than to have it intercepted by drones flying overhead (at least as of this moment), I am sure that you will understand why drones aren't really high on my list of priorities when it comes to privacy.

I sure do think they will... Are they the top of the list on privacy concerns? Probably not, but they will most likely be used to circumvent your privacy quite quickly.

[avxo]

I sure do think they will... Are they the top of the list on privacy concerns? Probably not, but they will most likely be used to circumvent your privacy quite quickly.

I don't disagree - I just think we need to prioritize. And drones just aren't high on my list at this point.

[333386]

And that ATF story i posted?

[avxo]

And that ATF story i posted?

I must have missed that - what was it about?

[333386]

Skip to comments.
ATF's Milwaukee sting operation marred by mistakes, failures
 http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/atfs-milwaukee-sting-operation-marred-by-mistakes-failures-mu8akpj-188952581.html ^ | 30 jan 2013 | John Diedrich and Raquel Rutledge
 
Posted on Wednesday, January 30, 2013 2:47:13 PM by rellimpank

. A store calling itself Fearless Distributing opened early last year on an out-of-the-way street in Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood, offering designer clothes, athletic shoes, jewelry and drug paraphernalia.

Those working behind the counter, however, weren't interested in selling anything.

They were undercover agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives running a storefront sting aimed at busting criminal operations in the city by purchasing drugs and guns from felons.

But the effort to date has not snared any major dealers or taken down a gang. Instead, it resulted in a string of mistakes and failures, including an ATF military-style machine gun landing on the streets of Milwaukee and the agency having $35,000 in merchandise stolen from its store, a Journal Sentinel investigation has found.

When the 10-month operation was shut down after the burglary, agents and Milwaukee police officers who participated in the sting cleared out the store but left behind a sensitive document that listed names, vehicles and phone numbers of undercover agents.

And the agency remains locked in a battle with the building's owner, who says he is owed about $15,000 because of utility bills, holes in the walls, broken doors and damage from an overflowing toilet.

The sting resulted in charges being filed against about 30 people, most for low-level drug sales and gun possession counts. But agents had the wrong person in at least three cases. In one, they charged a man who was in prison - as a result of an earlier ATF case - at the time agents said he was selling drugs to them.


(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...

bmp

[avxo]

Fun...

[Jack T. Cross]

Because, as I explained, I do not believe that drones, at this point in time, are likely to be used in a privacy-violating manner within the continental United States, even if they were to be relatively widely deployed. At this point in time (and with their current capabilities) they are ineffective tools for the creation of a surveillance society and not particularly better than other existing methods, such as orbital platforms and closed-circuit TV cameras. Much bigger and more realistic threats to privacy exist right now. For example, the Government has been demand(ing) increased access to and control of the Internet, including insisting that backdoors be incorporated into software and hardware communications products (e.g. CALEA) to allow for efficient interception of traffic by its representatives.

To be exact, this involves third-party traces of surveillance, in comparison to something that would conceivably bypass such traces.

And since I am orders of magnitude more likely to have my personal and private information intercepted as it flows over the Internet and/or is stored on various online service providers, than to have it intercepted by drones flying overhead (at least as of this moment), I am sure that you will understand why drones aren't really high on my list of priorities when it comes to privacy.

So it only makes a statement about the present, to say that you're unconcerned about drones, and not the future.  Isn't that true?

[avxo]

Lake Stevens pays couple $100,000 after police force way into home.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020235617_lakestevenssettlementxml.html

The article is quite a read... and those two idiots will remain police officers. Just amazing.

[333386]

John P. Martin and Craig R. McCoy, INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

 Posted: Thursday, January 31, 2013, 9:45 AM



Nine current or former Philadelphia Traffic Court judges were charged today with conspiracy and fraud after a three-year FBI probe into ticket-fixing in the beleaguered court.
 
A 77-count indictment, returned Tuesday but sealed until Thursday, said judges or their assistants routinely shredded documents, used code words and practiced "a well-understood conspiracy of silence" that turned the court into two systems: One where the average citizen paid for infractions, while connected offenders were found not guilty or saw their cases dismissed, costing the Commonwealth an untold amount.
 
"For years, even beyond the conspiracy charged, there existed a culture of ticket fixing at Traffic Court," the indictment said. "The ticket fixing was pervasive and frequent."
 
Charged were two of the court's three sitting judges, Michael Lowry and Michael Sullivan, as well as seven former judges.
 
Four - Fortunato Perri Sr., Robert Mulgrew, Willie Singletary and Thomasine Tynes - were elected by Philadelphia voters. The other three are former suburban district judges who were appointed for a stints in Philadelphia Traffic Court: Mark A. Bruno of a Chester County, H. Warren Hogeland of Bucks County, and Kenneth Miller of Delaware County.


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Unlike those who were indicted Thursday, Hogeland, Miller and Perri were charged separately by informations. The process is typically reserved for defendants who intend to plead guilty.
 
Also indicted were Traffic Court administrator William Hird; and two local businessmen, Henry P. Alfano and Robert Moy. Alfano owned a towing service that won a no-bid contract from traffic court.
 
U.S. Attorney Zane D. Memeger said the system cheated taxpayers of revenue and completely undermined public confidence in the institution.
 
"Those who seek to game the system by refusing to follow the rules need to be held accountable by the rule of law they swore to uphold," he said in a statement.
 
All but one of the defendants named in the indictment appeared before a magistrate judge and were expected to be released under $20,000 bail.
 
"I'm so upset," said Tynes, as she left Magistrate Judge L. Felipe Restrepo's courtroom. "I don't know nothing really."
 
The others mostly deferred to their lawyers, who denied any wrongdoing and looked forward to their day in court.
 
"Judge Sullivan never asked for nor did he receive any bribe, kickback or anything of value in exchange for performing his duties as an elected traffic court judge," defense attorney Henry E. Hockeimer Jr. said in a statement. "Judge Sullivan handled each case before him fairly and competently."
 
Singletary's lawyer, William J. Brennan, said he was pleased after such an exhaustive investigation to see that "the indictment does not allege that my client took one thin dime of graft or payola."
 
Still, the case in a single day decimated the bench and cast a cloud that stretched years. The Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts pledged support to keep the traffic court running.
 
"Philadelphia Traffic Court remains open and newly-assigned senior magisterial district judges from various counties have been appointed to hear cases," Justice J. Michael Eakin said in a statement.
 
As to suspending the judges, Jim Koval, a spokesman for the Supreme Court, said Thursday that he could not comment about the two Philadelphia judges' status. Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Gary S. Glazer, appointed to oversee and reform Traffic Court, said he has requested that Sullivan and Lowry be suspended, and has not scheduled them to hear cases.
 
In Chester County, the president judge issued an order barring Bruno from serving as a magistrate - or even entering his office.
 
The state Judicial Conduct Board, meanwhile, filed petitions to suspend without pay all the active judges until pending resolution of the federal case.
 
Kathleen D. Wilkinson, chairwoman of the 13,000-member Philadelphia Bar Association, called Thursday "a sad day for the justice system in Pennsylvania."
 
Wilkinson said the indictments "cast a shadow on the court that compromises the ability for justice to be dispensed fairly," and she called on the indicted justices to resign immediately.
 
"We respect the work done by Traffic Court Administrative Judge Gary S. Glazer to enact measures to restore integrity and public confidence in the operations of the court, and believe an overhaul of Traffic Court is needed so that justice is dispensed fairly and without favoritism," Wilkinson said.
 
For decades, traffic court has stirred controversy, seen as a scourge by drivers, a patronage mill by political observers, and ripe for corruption. Judges earn at least $85,000, win election only with the blessing of the local political parties and bosses. The court was twice before been the focus of federal probes.
 
The latest charges brought to light a probe that had been bubbling for at least three years, built on public raids and secret FBI wiretaps.
 
A preview emerged last fall, when a consultant commissioned by Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille concluded there was a pervasive culture of corruption in the court.
 
That report, prepared by former city prosecutor William G. Chadwick, cited eight former or current judges, and described Hird as the central coordinator for ticket-fixing, or, as the judges called it "consideration."
 
The indictment went further, spelling out in detail how friends, associates and ward leaders arranged to get cases dismissed or fines dropped.
 
In return, the judges allegedly got more than good will. According to the indictment, Perri accepted free auto services, towing, landscaping, and even a load of shrimp and crab cakes from Alfano, whose company, Century Motors, ran a towing service.
 
"I see Century on it, it's gold," Perri once told Alfano, according to the indictment. "When you call, I move, brother, believe me."
 
In February 2010, the indictment said, Alfano called on behalf of a truck driver who faced $442 in fines and court costs after being ticketed along I-95 for not clearing the snow and ice off his tractor-trailer. Twice the drive got notices that his license would be suspended.
 
"It will be alright, don't worry about it," Perri allegedly assured Alfano.
 
Two months later, the case landed before Sullivan. The driver didn't even attend the hearing, and was deemed not guilty, the indictment said.
 
Hird declined to comment but his lawyer, Greg Pagano, told reporters: "My client is a taxpaying, hardworking citizen who goes to work every day and who is being indicted essentially for doing his job."
 
Alfano is a former police officer who had a long-standing friendship with Perri, according to one of his lawyers. The suggestions of payoffs for ticket fixing was "a reach," said the lawyer, Jeffrey Miller.
 
Hird and Singletary are accused of lying to FBI agents, while Mulgrew, Tynes and Lowry are charged with perjury before the Grand Jury.
 
"You don't give out special favors, is that right?" a prosecutor asked Lowry before the grand jury in fall 2011, according to the indictment.
 
"No, I treat everybody the same," he replied.
 
Singletary resigned last year in an unrelated scandal, after a court staffer accused him of showing her a picture of his genitals on his cellphone.
 
Mulgrew was indicted in a separate federal corruption case, charged with defrauding an neighborhood nonprofit.
 
The Republican floor leader of the state Senate, Dominic Pileggi of Delaware County, said the indictments boosted his resolve to pass legislation abolishing the court.
 
"They confirm my opinion that the Traffic Court is not an institution that has any reason to continue to exist," Pileggi told reporters in a conference call. "They accelerate the urgency of enacting the reforms that I proposed."

[Shockwave]

Lake Stevens pays couple $100,000 after police force way into home.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020235617_lakestevenssettlementxml.html

The article is quite a read... and those two idiots will remain police officers. Just amazing.

Holy shit... My great aunt lives in/on lake Stevens...

[poldaktalos]

Lake Stevens pays couple $100,000 after police force way into home.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020235617_lakestevenssettlementxml.html

The article is quite a read... and those two idiots will remain police officers. Just amazing.

They should not have settled.
And those cops should rot in jail.

[333386]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2984171/posts





A bipartisan push intensified Thursday for answers from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives about a flawed storefront sting in Milwaukee.

A Journal Sentinel investigation this week exposed a 10-month federal operation marred by a series of mistakes and failures, including an agent's machine gun being stolen and burglars ripping off $35,000 in merchandise from the agency's phony store. Milwaukee police and ATF are still looking for that stolen machine gun, officials said Thursday.

"Suffice to say, ATF and the police department both have a keen interest in trying to get that firearm back," said Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn.

Mayor Tom Barrett joined the call for an investigation and two letters were sent to the ATF's acting director, one from a group of powerful lawmakers and another from U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).

The seven-page letter by four leading members of Congress called the flawed sting "disturbing" and asked acting director B. Todd Jones for written answers to more than two dozen questions related to the operation, dubbed "Fearless Distributing."

As a result of the sting, about 30 people were charged in federal and state court, most with low-level drug and gun counts. In at least three cases, the newspaper found, agents recommended charges against the wrong person, including a man who was in prison on a previous ATF case at the time he was accused of selling them drugs. The operation seized 145 guns.

"ATF must have rigorous oversight plans to ensure that these operations are conducted carefully," the letter from the four congressmen said. "Such management controls and rigorous oversight plans appear to have been absent during the botched Fearless Distributing case. Although not surprising, it is unacceptable."

The letter was signed by U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, (R-Wis.) chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations; U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, (R-Iowa), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee; U.S. Rep. Darrell E. Issa, (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the chamber's head investigative committee; and U.S. Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

The lawmakers were among those who led the congressional probe into ATF's Fast and Furious operation in Arizona, where agents encouraged the sale of more than 2,000 firearms to traffickers by gun stores but lost track of the weapons. Many ended up at crime scenes in Mexico.
 
Sensitive document found

Separately Thursday, Barrett joined the call for an investigation into the operation, which included agents leaving an ATF operational plan at the store when they shut it down late last year. The document listed undercover agents' real names, vehicle descriptions, cellphone numbers and secret signals used when busting a suspect.

"Clearly, there is a need for an examination of what went wrong with this operation," said Barrett, a Democrat. "In particular, I am concerned about sloppiness with documents being left behind that potentially put people's lives in danger."

Two Milwaukee police officers worked with ATF agents on the effort, which was under the control of the agency's Milwaukee office.

Flynn called ATF a valuable partner in his department's efforts to get illegal guns off the street. He acknowledged the operation had problems and needs to be investigated.

However, Flynn said Congress has spent years damaging the ATF's ability to do its job by cutting funding and putting special restrictions on it that other agencies do not get.

"When you look at an agency over time, it requires consistent leadership. I don't think it is a shock that things may go wrong at the street level when there has been a willful attempt to undermine senior leadership to set a consistent direction. There is inevitably a domino effect," he said. "It is an operation where some things went wrong. Some things went right. Clearly better supervision would have been helpful."

President Barack Obama has nominated Jones to be permanent director. The agency has been without a director since 2006, when Congress passed a provision in the Patriot Act requiring the director to be confirmed. Sensenbrenner said he inserted the provision to bring the ATF in line with other agencies.

"All the other major law enforcement agencies had Senate-confirmed heads except the ATF," Sensenbrenner said in a written statement Thursday. "The goal was to give ATF more stature and credibility, and it was an attempt to strengthen the agency after some high-profile failures."

Barrett said the case shows the need for a permanent director to be confirmed by Congress.

On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), called the effort a "failed operation" and also said the case shows the need to confirm Jones.

Barrett said politicians from both parties are going to use the blunders of this operation to make a point.

"There are critics of the ATF who are going to use this as an example of its failure, and there will be those who are concerned that ATF has been handcuffed and are going to use this to make the argument that you can't defund and take away powers from an agency, fail to confirm a permanent director and then complain that it's not doing its job," he said.

Johnson sent a separate letter to Jones expressing concern about the way the operation was handled and anger at how agents treated the owner of the building where they located their undercover storefront. Johnson said he contacted the agency more than two weeks ago after learning about the damage to property but never heard back.

"With the President calling on Congress to give BATF expansive new powers under a so-called assault weapons ban and other broad gun control measures, I believe it is incumbent on the BATF to fully explain why incidents of mismanagement, such as last year's events in Milwaukee, continue to occur," Johnson wrote.

ATF spokesman Special Agent Robert Schmidt did not return calls seeking comment Thursday. U.S. Attorney James Santelle, whose office was briefed on the Milwaukee sting before it was launched, could not be reached for comment.

Flynn said the operational goal was to seize illegal guns in Milwaukee from across the city, not necessarily in the Riverwest residential area where the store was located.

"This is an attempt by ATF to focus on the firearm," he said. "This effort is one tool of many."

Barrett said he was briefed about the operation last year. He was told the task force was targeting illegal guns, but not that it would be a storefront sting or where the operation would be located.
 
Residents angry

Several residents in the Riverwest neighborhood, where the store was set up in a former sign company building, are upset the agency brought drug dealers and gun-carrying felons to their neighborhood. They learned about the operation from the Journal Sentinel.

Barrett said he plans to meet with residents. He declined to comment on ATF's selection of a densely populated neighborhood for the storefront sting. The defendants in the criminal cases that were filed are all from outside the area of the store.

David Salkin, who unknowingly rented his building to the agency for its undercover operation, said the ATF owes him about $15,000 because of damage to his building, unpaid utility bills and lost rent. The agency contends the amount is much smaller.

An ATF attorney told Salkin to file a claim with the federal government and warned him to stop contacting the agency.

ATF attorney Patricia Cangemi wrote to Salkin, saying in part, "If you continue to contact the Agents after being so advised your contacts may be construed as harassment under the law. Threats or harassment of a Federal Agent is of grave concern."
 

[333386]

http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/decorated-combat-veteran-arrested-in-new-york-charged-with-5-felonies-for-possession-of-ar-magazines_01312013


Here we go. 

[Jack T. Cross]

Lake Stevens pays couple $100,000 after police force way into home.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2020235617_lakestevenssettlementxml.html

The article is quite a read... and those two idiots will remain police officers. Just amazing.

Wow.  That is one of strangest stories...

[tu_holmes]

Wow.  That is one of strangest stories...

I can not believe they were still employed... What. The. Fuck.

[333386]

Why Police Lie Under Oath
 
By MICHELLE ALEXANDER
 

THOUSANDS of people plead guilty to crimes every year in the United States because they know that the odds of a jury’s believing their word over a police officer’s are slim to none. As a juror, whom are you likely to believe: the alleged criminal in an orange jumpsuit or two well-groomed police officers in uniforms who just swore to God they’re telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but? As one of my colleagues recently put it, “Everyone knows you have to be crazy to accuse the police of lying.”

But are police officers necessarily more trustworthy than alleged criminals? I think not. Not just because the police have a special inclination toward confabulation, but because, disturbingly, they have an incentive to lie. In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.

That may sound harsh, but numerous law enforcement officials have put the matter more bluntly.  Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner, wrote an article in The San Francisco Chronicle decrying a police culture that treats lying as the norm: “Police officer perjury in court to justify illegal dope searches is commonplace. One of the dirty little not-so-secret secrets of the criminal justice system is undercover narcotics officers intentionally lying under oath. It is a perversion of the American justice system that strikes directly at the rule of law. Yet it is the routine way of doing business in courtrooms everywhere in America.”

The New York City Police Department is not exempt from this critique. In 2011, hundreds of drug cases were dismissed after several police officers were accused of mishandling evidence. That year, Justice Gustin L. Reichbach of the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn condemned a widespread culture of lying and corruption in the department’s drug enforcement units. “I thought I was not naïve,” he said when announcing a guilty verdict involving a police detective who had planted crack cocaine on a pair of suspects. “But even this court was shocked, not only by the seeming pervasive scope of misconduct but even more distressingly by the seeming casualness by which such conduct is employed.”

Remarkably, New York City officers have been found to engage in patterns of deceit in cases involving charges as minor as trespass. In September it was reported that the Bronx district attorney’s office was so alarmed by police lying that it decided to stop prosecuting people who were stopped and arrested for trespassing at public housing projects, unless prosecutors first interviewed the arresting officer to ensure the arrest was actually warranted. Jeannette Rucker, the chief of arraignments for the Bronx district attorney, explained in a letter that it had become apparent that the police were arresting people even when there was convincing evidence that they were innocent. To justify the arrests, Ms. Rucker claimed, police officers provided false written statements, and in depositions, the arresting officers gave false testimony.

Mr. Keane, in his Chronicle article, offered two major reasons the police lie so much. First, because they can. Police officers “know that in a swearing match between a drug defendant and a police officer, the judge always rules in favor of the officer.” At worst, the case will be dismissed, but the officer is free to continue business as usual. Second, criminal defendants are typically poor and uneducated, often belong to a racial minority, and often have a criminal record.  “Police know that no one cares about these people,” Mr. Keane explained.

All true, but there is more to the story than that.

Police departments have been rewarded in recent years for the sheer numbers of stops, searches and arrests. In the war on drugs, federal grant programs like the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program have encouraged state and local law enforcement agencies to boost drug arrests in order to compete for millions of dollars in funding. Agencies receive cash rewards for arresting high numbers of people for drug offenses, no matter how minor the offenses or how weak the evidence. Law enforcement has increasingly become a numbers game. And as it has, police officers’ tendency to regard procedural rules as optional and to lie and distort the facts has grown as well. Numerous scandals involving police officers lying or planting drugs — in Tulia, Tex. and Oakland, Calif., for example — have been linked to federally funded drug task forces eager to keep the cash rolling in.

THE pressure to boost arrest numbers is not limited to drug law enforcement. Even where no clear financial incentives exist, the “get tough” movement has warped police culture to such a degree that police chiefs and individual officers feel pressured to meet stop-and-frisk or arrest quotas in order to prove their “productivity.”

For the record, the New York City police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, denies that his department has arrest quotas. Such denials are mandatory, given that quotas are illegal under state law. But as the Urban Justice Center’s Police Reform Organizing Project has documented, numerous officers have contradicted Mr. Kelly. In 2010, a New York City police officer named Adil Polanco told a local ABC News reporter that “our primary job is not to help anybody, our primary job is not to assist anybody, our primary job is to get those numbers and come back with them.” He continued: “At the end of the night you have to come back with something.  You have to write somebody, you have to arrest somebody, even if the crime is not committed, the number’s there. So our choice is to come up with the number.”

Exposing police lying is difficult largely because it is rare for the police to admit their own lies or to acknowledge the lies of other officers. This reluctance derives partly from the code of silence that governs police practice and from the ways in which the system of mass incarceration is structured to reward dishonesty. But it’s also because police officers are human.

Research shows that ordinary human beings lie a lot — multiple times a day — even when there’s no clear benefit to lying. Generally, humans lie about relatively minor things like “I lost your phone number; that’s why I didn’t call” or “No, really, you don’t look fat.” But humans can also be persuaded to lie about far more important matters, especially if the lie will enhance or protect their reputation or standing in a group.

The natural tendency to lie makes quota systems and financial incentives that reward the police for the sheer numbers of people stopped, frisked or arrested especially dangerous. One lie can destroy a life, resulting in the loss of employment, a prison term and relegation to permanent second-class status. The fact that our legal system has become so tolerant of police lying indicates how corrupted our criminal justice system has become by declarations of war, “get tough” mantras, and a seemingly insatiable appetite for locking up and locking out the poorest and darkest among us.

And, no, I’m not crazy for thinking so.


Michelle Alexander is the author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”
 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/why-police-officers-lie-under-oath.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

[333386]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/doj-drones-paper_n_2619582.html


LOL - but but but but - nobel peace prize!!!!

[333386]

http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-leaked-drone-memo-2013-2?op=1


Where are all the anti-war liberals now? 

[333386]

Ask yourself this question: If the US government is benign, why does it need to have the Patriot Act, secret rendition sites in 54 or more countries around the world; NDAA, SIPA, SOPA, FEMA camps; TSA VIPR teams on our highways and at our bus and train stations (more security theater); 7000 MORE M-4's for DHS (the REAL military kind, you know the full-auto kind that are the REAL "assault weapons" as opposed to the civilian semi-auto kind which the government is trying to ban); DHS purchasing 1.6 BILLION rounds of hollow point ammunition (ammunition that is not allowed on the battlefield per the Rules of Land Warfare so who are they going to use it against); to give heavily armored vehicles to local law enforcement around the country; to have security camera's and drones everywhere all tied together in fusion centers; a massive data center that has it's own power generating facility capable of capturing and storing all of the electronic (phone, internet, radio you name it) communications occuring every second on the entire planet for the next hundred years; to feel up travelers private parts (especially old people and children) in a effort to make everyone "feel safe"; to authorize in Obama Care (HR3590.AS, Section 5210 Establishing a Ready Reserve Corps) the formation of a federal civilian armed force of equal number, equipment and training to the U.S. Military; to hold "predeployment cross training and qualification" drills involving military and civilian paramilitary forces in heavily populated urban areas using military armored vehicles and helicopters firing their weapons indiscriminately (using blank ammunition); DHS's "See Something Say Something" program to turn our nation into a gaggle of government informants reminiscent of East Germany during the Cold War; to discredit right wing religious groups, prolife groups, pro Second Amendment groups and veterans returning from combat deployment as "future threats to America"?

Tell me AGAIN why DHS needs 7000 full auto M4's and 1.6 BILLION rounds of ammunition?

Instead of worrying about a law abiding citizen's semiautomatic AR15 that he uses to shoot cardboard targets a couple times a summer, why aren’t We The People wet-our-pants terrified of the sociopaths in DHS that are ordering banned for civilians full auto M4's with enough ammo to shoot every man woman and child in this country FIVE TIMES?

Ya, let's ban scary looking semi-automatic rifles. What a bunch of nitwits we are.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-leaked-drone-memo-2013-2?op=1#ixzz2K8BnVePB

[333386]

Government prosecutors argued against granting bond to Deming, N.M., gun dealer Rick Reese and his son Ryin, painting them as dangerous risks for release, court documents received this evening by Gun Rights Examiner reveal. United States Attorney Kenneth J. Gonzales, nominated by President Obama last November to serve on the U.S. District Court in the District of New Mexico, filed a supplement to the defendant’s motion for release in that court last Tuesday, citing an affidavit he claimed contained “statements relevant to the motion.
 
“[T]hey highlight the Defendants release still pose a danger to the community,” Gonzales wrote in the electronically filed document. “The statement also show the Defendants are not likely to follow any Court imposed orders or conditions.”
 
Gonzales was referring to a January 29 sworn and notarized statement by Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Jose Ramon Martinez, in which the agent related monitored telephone conversations between the elder Reese and wife Terri, and also between son Ryin and his girlfriend.
 
Supposedly incriminating statements included Reese telling his wife “The truth will come out and these people will be exposed for what they truly are – a bunch of cons liars and cheats and thieves.
 
“They took a premise, they wanted our stuff, and they wanted to destroy out family so they reverse engineered,” the affidavit continued, quoting Reese.
 
“In reference to AUSA Maria Armijjo, Terri Reese stated ‘she is willing to get in bed with the devil to destroy a good Christian family,” the affidavit again alleged.
 
In a second intercepted call, the affidavit states Reese told his wife “He did say that they are attempting to hide and seal a whole bunch of stuff that they are trying to open you know, and that’s really encouraging because it shows the depth of the depravity of the justice department, it shows that they are just lying cheating stealing, it shows they are whores.”
 
“Rick Reese also stated to his wife, ‘You got ‘em by the [redacted]!” the affidavit further quotes.
 
In a third monitored telephone call, this one between son Ryin Reese and his unidentified girlfriend, the younger Reese is quoted telling her “The judge made it clear that he didn’t give a [redacted] about XXXX.”
 
Referring to the U.S. Marshal’s Service, the girlfriend remarked “They enjoy their power,” eliciting a response from Ryin that “[T]hey are the same people that back shoot 14-year-old boys and get medals, Ruby Ridge style.
 
In a subsequent call to Terri, Martinez wrote “Rick made comments to the effect of the following: ‘The marshals were both AH’s not at all like the marshals that we had during the trial … these two were full of testosterone. The more people like us that they hunt down and whack and murder, maybe not physically like Randy Weaver [or] the Branch Davidians, but they murdered my marriage.’”
 
So far, the conversations recorded and reported mirror sentiments shared by millions of peaceable Americans outraged by government operations in which citizens were killed when alternative peaceful outcomes were available. The clincher, at least as far as Gonzales is concerned, is in a final recorded conversation between Rick and Terri in which he reportedly stated “They’ll get the world they deserve pretty soon!”
 
Note there was no hint of this sentiment referring to anything illegal or violent, and again, such sentiments can be found on gun blogs and forums exposiing government corruption and excesses and calling for justice catching up to those who perpetrate injustice under color of authority. Indeed, that Judge Robert C. Brack ruled against Gonzales, who wanted to keep the new trial motion hearing selaed from the public, and then ruled against the prosecution’s fight to deny the Reese family both a new trial and bail, citing their suppression of evidence, point to the slow recognition that the defendants have been the victims.
 
This transparent attempt to portray the defendants as dangers to the community and as being too risky to grant bail, especially after almost 18 months behind bars with all major charges either dismissed or having been found not guilty of, and the further attempt to do so closed off from public scrutiny should raise serious doubts on the fitness of Gonzales to be elevated to a judgeship and more. A correspondence by a California attorney to N.M. Senator Martin Heinrich requesting an investigation for misconduct, to include the potential for disbarment and criminal prosecution, may point the way to similar efforts from both supporters of the Reese family and those simply interested in basic justice. American citizens are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and are not to be destroyed in the process of trying to defend themselves, with all their assets seized, against ambitious government careerists wielding essentially unlimited power and resources.

http://www.examiner.com/article/government-fought-bail-release-claiming-gun-dealers-a-danger-to-community

[Shockwave]

Government prosecutors argued against granting bond to Deming, N.M., gun dealer Rick Reese and his son Ryin, painting them as dangerous risks for release, court documents received this evening by Gun Rights Examiner reveal. United States Attorney Kenneth J. Gonzales, nominated by President Obama last November to serve on the U.S. District Court in the District of New Mexico, filed a supplement to the defendant’s motion for release in that court last Tuesday, citing an affidavit he claimed contained “statements relevant to the motion.
 
“[T]hey highlight the Defendants release still pose a danger to the community,” Gonzales wrote in the electronically filed document. “The statement also show the Defendants are not likely to follow any Court imposed orders or conditions.”
 
Gonzales was referring to a January 29 sworn and notarized statement by Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Jose Ramon Martinez, in which the agent related monitored telephone conversations between the elder Reese and wife Terri, and also between son Ryin and his girlfriend.
 
Supposedly incriminating statements included Reese telling his wife “The truth will come out and these people will be exposed for what they truly are – a bunch of cons liars and cheats and thieves.
 
“They took a premise, they wanted our stuff, and they wanted to destroy out family so they reverse engineered,” the affidavit continued, quoting Reese.
 
“In reference to AUSA Maria Armijjo, Terri Reese stated ‘she is willing to get in bed with the devil to destroy a good Christian family,” the affidavit again alleged.
 
In a second intercepted call, the affidavit states Reese told his wife “He did say that they are attempting to hide and seal a whole bunch of stuff that they are trying to open you know, and that’s really encouraging because it shows the depth of the depravity of the justice department, it shows that they are just lying cheating stealing, it shows they are whores.”
 
“Rick Reese also stated to his wife, ‘You got ‘em by the [redacted]!” the affidavit further quotes.
 
In a third monitored telephone call, this one between son Ryin Reese and his unidentified girlfriend, the younger Reese is quoted telling her “The judge made it clear that he didn’t give a [redacted] about XXXX.”
 
Referring to the U.S. Marshal’s Service, the girlfriend remarked “They enjoy their power,” eliciting a response from Ryin that “[T]hey are the same people that back shoot 14-year-old boys and get medals, Ruby Ridge style.
 
In a subsequent call to Terri, Martinez wrote “Rick made comments to the effect of the following: ‘The marshals were both AH’s not at all like the marshals that we had during the trial … these two were full of testosterone. The more people like us that they hunt down and whack and murder, maybe not physically like Randy Weaver [or] the Branch Davidians, but they murdered my marriage.’”
 
So far, the conversations recorded and reported mirror sentiments shared by millions of peaceable Americans outraged by government operations in which citizens were killed when alternative peaceful outcomes were available. The clincher, at least as far as Gonzales is concerned, is in a final recorded conversation between Rick and Terri in which he reportedly stated “They’ll get the world they deserve pretty soon!”
 
Note there was no hint of this sentiment referring to anything illegal or violent, and again, such sentiments can be found on gun blogs and forums exposiing government corruption and excesses and calling for justice catching up to those who perpetrate injustice under color of authority. Indeed, that Judge Robert C. Brack ruled against Gonzales, who wanted to keep the new trial motion hearing selaed from the public, and then ruled against the prosecution’s fight to deny the Reese family both a new trial and bail, citing their suppression of evidence, point to the slow recognition that the defendants have been the victims.
 
This transparent attempt to portray the defendants as dangers to the community and as being too risky to grant bail, especially after almost 18 months behind bars with all major charges either dismissed or having been found not guilty of, and the further attempt to do so closed off from public scrutiny should raise serious doubts on the fitness of Gonzales to be elevated to a judgeship and more. A correspondence by a California attorney to N.M. Senator Martin Heinrich requesting an investigation for misconduct, to include the potential for disbarment and criminal prosecution, may point the way to similar efforts from both supporters of the Reese family and those simply interested in basic justice. American citizens are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and are not to be destroyed in the process of trying to defend themselves, with all their assets seized, against ambitious government careerists wielding essentially unlimited power and resources.

http://www.examiner.com/article/government-fought-bail-release-claiming-gun-dealers-a-danger-to-community

What did they do wrong? What were they arrested for?

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/06/obama-drone-program-targeted-killing_n_2631425.html


LMFAO!!!!!

Now they are upset?

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WASHINGTON -- In October 2011, Scott Shane, a national security reporter for The New York Times, sent an email to a branch of the Department of Justice that deals with Freedom of Information Act requests, to check on one of his FOIA filings.

Sixteen months earlier, Shane had asked that DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel -- which advises the White House on the legality of government actions -- release any memoranda it had relating to the president's top-secret program of targeted killing of suspected terrorists, much of which was understood to be conducted by drones.

President Barack Obama's drone and targeted killing program, which has remained highly obscure despite expanding rapidly under his watch, burst into the public discourse again on Monday after a DOJ briefing paper, outlining the executive branch's interpretation of its powers to kill extrajudicially, was published by NBC News.

But back in late 2011, the program, and its possible reach, was just starting to receive attention. That September, an American citizen named Anwar al-Awlaki, who had become a significant figure in al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, was killed in a CIA drone strike in Yemen. President Obama hailed the killing in a public address (see the video below).

A week later, Charles Savage, another national security reporter at the Times, wrote that Awlaki's killing -- and the killing, more broadly, of any American with close ties to al Qaeda -- had been authorized by a secret memo from the Office of Legal Counsel.

Shane pushed the Justice Department about his aging FOIA request. In June 2010, his request had been immediately accepted and granted "expedited processing," but now Shane wanted, as the OLC's FOIA officer later wrote to a colleague, "an explanation of why it had taken a year and a half to respond."

"We are almost finished processing his request," the colleague, OLC lawyer Peter Finn, wrote back.




A few days later, a response finally arrived in Shane's mailbox: Not only was the OLC denying his request, but it refused to acknowledge if the documents he'd requested even existed. "The very fact of the existence or nonexistence of such documents," the letter said, "is itself classified."

For the past three years, delays and convoluted explanations of this sort have been the response of the Obama administration to any effort to learn anything about the targeted killing program. For years, the government described any such program, and particularly the CIA's role in it, as so sensitive that it couldn't even be discussed. But long after the practice of targeted killing became a matter of widespread discussion -- and the president himself addressed targeting decisions in an informal Google hangout -- the administration has continued to use elaborate legal rationales and the blanket assertion of national security needs, to prevent any releases.

"To say that there is little transparency about the CIA's role in this is a real understatement," said Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has had several FOIA requests denied on similar grounds. "We really have nothing at all, from the CIA itself, about its role, about the standards, about the process used to add people to kill lists, about number killed, about anything."

On his first day in the Oval Office, Obama promised to deliver a new era of government openness and ordered that FOIA requests be met quickly and generously.

Instead, the administration has thrown up roadblocks at every effort to learn about the targeted killing program. Court filings have been greeted with assertions of executive privilege or national security exemptions. Human rights researchers have been ignored. And at least a dozen formal inquiries from Congress have been met with silence.

FOIA experts have explored every avenue to squeeze out information. Jason Leopold, an investigative reporter with Truthout, has even asked for the emails behind the government's decisions to deny other FOIA filings. (It was one of Leopold's requests, shared with The Huffington Post, that revealed the OLC exchange about Shane.)

The administration's effort not to answer has been so convoluted and shrouded in obfuscation that one federal judge recently decried its "Alice-in-Wonderland nature," even as she concluded there was no way around the administration's arguments.

The lack of information affects not just legal watchdogs and government oversight; it also limits outside attempts to measure the efficacy of the program.

James Cavallaro, a human rights researcher at Stanford, recently spent six months attempting to meet with members of Obama's national security team before publishing a study that revealed the deadly consequences of the U.S. drone program in Pakistan. He never received a reply.

"It's disconcerting that there's not greater transparency and really unacceptable," Cavallaro said.

In his research on human rights violations around the world, Cavallaro noted that it's not uncommon for host countries to rebuff his requests for access and interviews (although he's had luck in some unlikely places, like Panama and Cambodia).

"But here's the kicker," he said. "Is that the standard that should apply in the United States? The standards of the many abusive governments that commit rights violations? If that's the standard the U.S. should hold itself to, then they're doing a fine job."

The ACLU had no better luck when it brought a lawsuit in mid-2010 against the government to prevent the killing of Awlaki, with his father as the plaintiff. The government responded in part that the case should be dismissed on the grounds that defending itself would require acknowledging a classified program. The case died a few months later.

But with every new speech by an administration official discussing the program, the blanket claim that the government cannot respond to FOIA requests or defend itself in court "becomes substantially less plausible," said Micah Zenko, an expert on targeted killing at the Council on Foreign Relations who has closely followed the secrecy debate.

"Every administration wants maximum power and minimum oversight," Zenko said. "Nobody wants to have their homework graded. But the whole point of the Constitution is that the president has his homework graded."

The Awlaki killing was the first known time an American citizen was deliberately killed by a U.S.-controlled drone strike. Two weeks later, his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was killed in a separate attack in Yemen. As Zenko has noted, administration officials initially claimed the boy was "in his mid-twenties" and "of military age," before being confronted with his true date of birth. The State Department still refuses to address the killing, saying that it has yet to receive proof of his death from Yemeni authorities.

The DOJ briefing paper published on Monday offers yet another twist in the saga. It is not the OLC memo on which Savage had reported in 2011, but is instead an unclassified summary of the memo that was given to Congress last summer.

But when a handful of journalists, learning about the existence of the paper last year, sent a FOIA request for a copy, they were told that it was just an unfinished part of the government's internal deliberation process. In other words, they were told it was a draft -- and not subject to FOIA release.

This story has been updated to note Truthout reporter Jason Leopold's work on uncovering the targeted killing program, including information he obtained from FOIA filings and shared with HuffPost.

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Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens

The president's partisan lawyers purport to vest him with the most extreme power a political leader can seize



Glenn Greenwald

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 February 2013 10.56 EST

Jump to comments (1547)




Barack Obama Photograph: Reuters


The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. In September 2011, it killed US citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, along with US citizen Samir Khan, and then, in circumstances that are still unexplained, two weeks later killed Awlaki's 16-year-old American son Abdulrahman with a separate drone strike in Yemen.

Since then, senior Obama officials including Attorney General Eric Holder and John Brennan, Obama's top terrorism adviser and his current nominee to lead the CIA, have explicitly argued that the president is and should be vested with this power. Meanwhile, a Washington Post article from October reported that the administration is formally institutionalizing this president's power to decide who dies under the Orwellian title "disposition matrix".

When the New York Times back in April, 2010 first confirmed the existence of Obama's hit list, it made clear just what an extremist power this is, noting: "It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing." The NYT quoted a Bush intelligence official as saying "he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president". When the existence of Obama's hit list was first reported several months earlier by the Washington Post's Dana Priest, she wrote that the "list includes three Americans".

What has made these actions all the more radical is the absolute secrecy with which Obama has draped all of this. Not only is the entire process carried out solely within the Executive branch - with no checks or oversight of any kind - but there is zero transparency and zero accountability. The president's underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the president - at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as "Terror Tuesday" - then chooses from "baseball cards" and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark.

In fact, The Most Transparent Administration Ever™ has been so fixated on secrecy that they have refused even to disclose the legal memoranda prepared by Obama lawyers setting forth their legal rationale for why the president has this power. During the Bush years, when Bush refused to disclose the memoranda from his Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that legally authorized torture, rendition, warrantless eavesdropping and the like, leading Democratic lawyers such as Dawn Johnsen (Obama's first choice to lead the OLC) vehemently denounced this practice as a grave threat, warning that "the Bush Administration's excessive reliance on 'secret law' threatens the effective functioning of American democracy" and "the withholding from Congress and the public of legal interpretations by the [OLC] upsets the system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government."

But when it comes to Obama's assassination power, this is exactly what his administration has done. It has repeatedly refused to disclose the principal legal memoranda prepared by Obama OLC lawyers that justified his kill list. It is, right now, vigorously resisting lawsuits from the New York Times and the ACLU to obtain that OLC memorandum. In sum, Obama not only claims he has the power to order US citizens killed with no transparency, but that even the documents explaining the legal rationale for this power are to be concealed. He's maintaining secret law on the most extremist power he can assert.

Last night, NBC News' Michael Isikoff released a 16-page "white paper" prepared by the Obama DOJ that purports to justify Obama's power to target even Americans for assassination without due process (the memo is embedded in full below). This is not the primary OLC memo justifying Obama's kill list - that is still concealed - but it appears to track the reasoning of that memo as anonymously described to the New York Times in October 2011.

This new memo is entitled: "Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a US Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa'ida or An Associated Force". It claims its conclusion is "reached with recognition of the extraordinary seriousness of a lethal operation by the United States against a US citizen". Yet it is every bit as chilling as the Bush OLC torture memos in how its clinical, legalistic tone completely sanitizes the radical and dangerous power it purports to authorize.

I've written many times at length about why the Obama assassination program is such an extreme and radical threat - see here for one of the most comprehensive discussions, with documentation of how completely all of this violates Obama and Holder's statements before obtaining power - and won't repeat those arguments here. Instead, there are numerous points that should be emphasized about the fundamentally misleading nature of this new memo:

1. Equating government accusations with guilt

The core distortion of the War on Terror under both Bush and Obama is the Orwellian practice of equating government accusations of terrorism with proof of guilt. One constantly hears US government defenders referring to "terrorists" when what they actually mean is: those accused by the government of terrorism. This entire memo is grounded in this deceit.

Time and again, it emphasizes that the authorized assassinations are carried out "against a senior operational leader of al-Qaida or its associated forces who poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States." Undoubtedly fearing that this document would one day be public, Obama lawyers made certain to incorporate this deceit into the title itself: "Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a US Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaida or An Associated Force."

This ensures that huge numbers of citizens - those who spend little time thinking about such things and/or authoritarians who assume all government claims are true - will instinctively justify what is being done here on the ground that we must kill the Terrorists or joining al-Qaida means you should be killed. That's the "reasoning" process that has driven the War on Terror since it commenced: if the US government simply asserts without evidence or trial that someone is a terrorist, then they are assumed to be, and they can then be punished as such - with indefinite imprisonment or death.

But of course, when this memo refers to "a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaida", what it actually means is this: someone whom the President - in total secrecy and with no due process - has accused of being that. Indeed, the memo itself makes this clear, as it baldly states that presidential assassinations are justified when "an informed, high-level official of the US government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the US".

This is the crucial point: the memo isn't justifying the due-process-free execution of senior al-Qaida leaders who pose an imminent threat to the US. It is justifying the due-process-free execution of people secretly accused by the president and his underlings, with no due process, of being that. The distinction between (a) government accusations and (b) proof of guilt is central to every free society, by definition, yet this memo - and those who defend Obama's assassination power - willfully ignore it.

Those who justify all of this by arguing that Obama can and should kill al-Qaida leaders who are trying to kill Americans are engaged in supreme question-begging. Without any due process, transparency or oversight, there is no way to know who is a "senior al-Qaida leader" and who is posing an "imminent threat" to Americans. All that can be known is who Obama, in total secrecy, accuses of this.

(Indeed, membership in al-Qaida is not even required to be assassinated, as one can be a member of a group deemed to be an "associated force" of al-Qaida, whatever that might mean: a formulation so broad and ill-defined that, as Law Professor Kevin Jon Heller argues, it means the memo "authorizes the use of lethal force against individuals whose targeting is, without more, prohibited by international law".)

The definition of an extreme authoritarian is one who is willing blindly to assume that government accusations are true without any evidence presented or opportunity to contest those accusations. This memo - and the entire theory justifying Obama's kill list - centrally relies on this authoritarian conflation of government accusations and valid proof of guilt.

They are not the same and never have been. Political leaders who decree guilt in secret and with no oversight inevitably succumb to error and/or abuse of power. Such unchecked accusatory decrees are inherently untrustworthy (indeed, Yemen experts have vehemently contested the claim that Awlaki himself was a senior al-Qaida leader posing an imminent threat to the US). That's why due process is guaranteed in the Constitution and why judicial review of government accusations has been a staple of western justice since the Magna Carta: because leaders can't be trusted to decree guilt and punish citizens without evidence and an adversarial process. That is the age-old basic right on which this memo, and the Obama presidency, is waging war.

2. Creating a ceiling, not a floor

The most vital fact to note about this memorandum is that it is not purporting to impose requirements on the president's power to assassinate US citizens. When it concludes that the president has the authority to assassinate "a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaida" who "poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the US" where capture is "infeasible", it is not concluding that assassinations are permissible only in those circumstances.
 
To the contrary, the memo expressly makes clear that presidential assassinations may be permitted even when none of those circumstances prevail: "This paper does not attempt to determine the minimum requirements necessary to render such an operation lawful." Instead, as the last line of the memo states: "it concludes only that the stated conditions would be sufficient to make lawful a lethal operation" - not that such conditions are necessary to find these assassinations legal. The memo explicitly leaves open the possibility that presidential assassinations of US citizens may be permissible even when the target is not a senior al-Qaida leader posing an imminent threat and/or when capture is feasible.

Critically, the rationale of the memo - that the US is engaged in a global war against al-Qaida and "associated forces" - can be easily used to justify presidential assassinations of US citizens in circumstances far beyond the ones described in this memo. If you believe the president has the power to execute US citizens based on the accusation that the citizen has joined al-Qaida, what possible limiting principle can you cite as to why that shouldn't apply to a low-level al-Qaida member, including ones found in places where capture may be feasible (including US soil)? The purported limitations on this power set forth in this memo, aside from being incredibly vague, can be easily discarded once the central theory of presidential power is embraced.

3. Relies on the core Bush/Cheney theory of a global battlefield

The primary theory embraced by the Bush administration to justify its War on Terror policies was that the "battlefield" is no longer confined to identifiable geographical areas, but instead, the entire globe is now one big, unlimited "battlefield". That theory is both radical and dangerous because a president's powers are basically omnipotent on a "battlefield". There, state power is shielded from law, from courts, from constitutional guarantees, from all forms of accountability: anyone on a battlefield can be killed or imprisoned without charges. Thus, to posit the world as a battlefield is, by definition, to create an imperial, omnipotent presidency. That is the radical theory that unleashed all the rest of the controversial and lawless Bush/Cheney policies.

This "world-is-a-battlefield" theory was once highly controversial among Democrats. John Kerry famously denounced it when running for president, arguing instead that the effort against terrorism is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world".

But this global-war theory is exactly what lies at heart of the Obama approach to Terrorism generally and this memo specifically. It is impossible to defend Obama's assassination powers without embracing it (which is why key Obama officials have consistently done so). That's because these assassinations are taking place in countries far from any war zone, such as Yemen and Somalia. You can't defend the application of "war powers" in these countries without embracing the once-very-controversial Bush/Cheney view that the whole is now a "battlefield" and the president's war powers thus exist without geographic limits.

This new memo makes clear that this Bush/Cheney worldview is at the heart of the Obama presidency. The president, it claims, "retains authority to use force against al-Qaida and associated forces outside the area of active hostilities". In other words: there are, subject to the entirely optional "feasibility of capture" element, no geographic limits to the president's authority to kill anyone he wants. This power applies not only to war zones, but everywhere in the world that he claims a member of al-Qaida is found. This memo embraces and institutionalizes the core Bush/Cheney theory that justified the entire panoply of policies Democrats back then pretended to find so objectionable.

4. Expanding the concept of "imminence" beyond recognition

The memo claims that the president's assassination power applies to a senior al-Qaida member who "poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States". That is designed to convince citizens to accept this power by leading them to believe it's similar to common and familiar domestic uses of lethal force on US soil: if, for instance, an armed criminal is in the process of robbing a bank or is about to shoot hostages, then the "imminence" of the threat he poses justifies the use of lethal force against him by the police.

But this rhetorical tactic is totally misleading. The memo is authorizing assassinations against citizens in circumstances far beyond this understanding of "imminence". Indeed, the memo expressly states that it is inventing "a broader concept of imminence" than is typically used in domestic law. Specifically, the president's assassination power "does not require that the US have clear evidence that a specific attack . . . will take place in the immediate future". The US routinely assassinates its targets not when they are engaged in or plotting attacks but when they are at home, with family members, riding in a car, at work, at funerals, rescuing other drone victims, etc.

Many of the early objections to this new memo have focused on this warped and incredibly broad definition of "imminence". The ACLU's Jameel Jaffer told Isikoff that the memo "redefines the word imminence in a way that deprives the word of its ordinary meaning". Law Professor Kevin Jon Heller called Jaffer's objection "an understatement", noting that the memo's understanding of "imminence" is "wildly overbroad" under international law.

Crucially, Heller points out what I noted above: once you accept the memo's reasoning - that the US is engaged in a global war, that the world is a battlefield, and the president has the power to assassinate any member of al-Qaida or associated forces - then there is no way coherent way to limit this power to places where capture is infeasible or to persons posing an "imminent" threat. The legal framework adopted by the memo means the president can kill anyone he claims is a member of al-Qaida regardless of where they are found or what they are doing.

The only reason to add these limitations of "imminence" and "feasibility of capture" is, as Heller said, purely political: to make the theories more politically palatable. But the definitions for these terms are so vague and broad that they provide no real limits on the president's assassination power. As the ACLU's Jaffer says: "This is a chilling document" because "it argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen" and the purported limits "are elastic and vaguely defined, and it's easy to see how they could be manipulated."

5. Converting Obama underlings into objective courts

This memo is not a judicial opinion. It was not written by anyone independent of the president. To the contrary, it was written by life-long partisan lackeys: lawyers whose careerist interests depend upon staying in the good graces of Obama and the Democrats, almost certainly Marty Lederman and David Barron. Treating this document as though it confers any authority on Obama is like treating the statements of one's lawyer as a judicial finding or jury verdict.

Indeed, recall the primary excuse used to shield Bush officials from prosecution for their crimes of torture and illegal eavesdropping: namely, they got Bush-appointed lawyers in the DOJ to say that their conduct was legal, and therefore, it should be treated as such. This tactic - getting partisan lawyers and underlings of the president to say that the president's conduct is legal - was appropriately treated with scorn when invoked by Bush officials to justify their radical programs. As Digby wrote about Bush officials who pointed to the OLC memos it got its lawyers to issue about torture and eavesdropping, such a practice amounts to:


"validating the idea that obscure Justice Department officials can be granted the authority to essentially immunize officials at all levels of the government, from the president down to the lowest field officer, by issuing a secret memo. This is a very important new development in western jurisprudence and one that surely requires more study and consideration. If Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan had known about this, they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble."

Life-long Democratic Party lawyers are not going to oppose the terrorism policies of the president who appointed them. A president can always find underlings and political appointees to endorse whatever he wants to do. That's all this memo is: the by-product of obsequious lawyers telling their Party's leader that he is (of course) free to do exactly that which he wants to do, in exactly the same way that Bush got John Yoo to tell him that torture was not torture, and that even it if were, it was legal.

That's why courts, not the president's partisan lawyers, should be making these determinations. But when the ACLU tried to obtain a judicial determination as to whether Obama is actually authorized to assassinate US citizens, the Obama DOJ went to extreme lengths to block the court from ruling on that question. They didn't want independent judges to determine the law. They wanted their own lawyers to do so.

That's all this memo is: Obama-loyal appointees telling their leader that he has the authority to do what he wants. But in the warped world of US politics, this - secret memos from partisan lackeys - has replaced judicial review as the means to determine the legality of the president's conduct.

6. Making a mockery of "due process"

The core freedom most under attack by the War on Terror is the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process. It provides that "no person shall be . . . deprived of life . . . without due process of law". Like putting people in cages for life on island prisons with no trial, claiming that the president has the right to assassinate US citizens far from any battlefield without any charges or trial is the supreme evisceration of this right.

The memo pays lip service to the right it is destroying: "Under the traditional due process balancing analysis . . . . we recognize that there is no private interest more weighty than a person's interest in his life." But it nonetheless argues that a "balancing test" is necessary to determine the extent of the process that is due before the president can deprive someone of their life, and further argues that, as the New York Times put it when this theory was first unveiled: "while the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process applied, it could be satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch."

Stephen Colbert perfectly mocked this theory when Eric Holder first unveiled it to defend the president's assassination program. At the time, Holder actually said: "due process and judicial process are not one and the same." Colbert interpreted that claim as follows:


"Trial by jury, trial by fire, rock, paper scissors, who cares? Due process just means that there is a process that you do. The current process is apparently, first the president meets with his advisers and decides who he can kill. Then he kills them."

It is fitting indeed that the memo expressly embraces two core Bush/Cheney theories to justify this view of what "due process" requires. First, it cites the Bush DOJ's core view, as enunciated by John Yoo, that courts have no role to play in what the president does in the War on Terror because judicial review constitutes "judicial encroachment" on the "judgments by the President and his national security advisers as to when and how to use force". And then it cites the Bush DOJ's mostly successful arguments in the 2004 Hamdi case that the president has the authority even to imprison US citizens without trial provided that he accuses them of being a terrorist.

The reason this is so fitting is because, as I've detailed many times, it was these same early Bush/Cheney theories that made me want to begin writing about politics, all driven by my perception that the US government was becoming extremist and dangerous. During the early Bush years, the very idea that the US government asserted the power to imprison US citizens without charges and due process (or to eavesdrop on them) was so radical that, at the time, I could hardly believe they were being asserted out in the open.

Yet here we are almost a full decade later. And we have the current president asserting the power not merely to imprison or eavesdrop on US citizens without charges or trial, but to order them executed - and to do so in total secrecy, with no checks or oversight. If you believe the president has the power to order US citizens executed far from any battlefield with no charges or trial, then it's truly hard to conceive of any asserted power you would find objectionable.

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Lawyer Sums Up The Enormous Stakes Of The NDAA Indefinite Detention Lawsuit
 


Michael Kelley|36 minutes ago|183|



Hedges v. Obama, the lawsuit challenging the indefinite detention provision of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), continued Wednesday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
 
A three-judge panel heard oral arguments regarding the indefinite detention clause of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allow the U.S. military to indefinitely detain anyone who provides "substantial support" to the Taliban, al-Qaeda or "associated forces," including "any person who has committed a belligerent act" in the aid of enemy forces.
 
A decision — whether to reinstate a permanent block of the provision or to overrule the injunction and affirm the clause — is expected in coming months. The clause is currently in effect (pending that decision), and the case is expected to go to the Supreme Court.

 
After the hearing, plaintiffs of the case held a panel in which attorney Carl Mayer gave a perfect summary of why this case is so important:
 
"In broad terms, the stakes are very high because what our case comes do to is: Are we going to have a civil justice system in the United States or a military justice system? The civil justice system is something that's ingrained in the Constitution and was always very important in com batting tyranny and building a democratic society. And what the NDAA is trying to impose is a system of military justice that allows the military to police the streets of America, to detain U.S. citizens, to detain residents in the United States in military prisons, and — probably the most frightening aspect of the NDAA — it allows detention 'until the end of hostilities.'
 
We're now, by my count, [on] day 4,163 of this war, which is an open-ended war against al-Qaeda, the Taliban and now it's defined as 'associated forces' in the NDAA."
 
Mayer then noted that this "type of militarization of our justice system has occurred before," citing the forced internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
 
"We're trying to prevent a repeat of episodes like that," Mayer said. "That's what the case is about — it's really about preserving our civil liberties and preserving our civil justice system, in broad terms."
 
Here's a video of the panel. Mayer's comments are at 7:20:
 


Section 1021 of the NDAA is being challenged in the case, and it reads (in part):
 
The President has the authority to detain persons that the President determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, and persons who harbored those responsible for those attacks. The President also has the authority to detain persons who were part of or substantially supported, Taliban or al-Qaida forces or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act, or has directly supported hostilities, in the aid of such enemy forces.
 
The government has argued that section 1021 is merely an "affirmation" of the 2001 Authorization of Military Force (AUMF), a joint resolution passed a week after 9/11 that authorizes the government to indefinitely detain “those who planned, authorized, committed, or aided in the actual 9/11 attacks” as well as those who harbored them.
 
The plaintiffs argue, and initial judge Judge Katherine Forrest agreed, that the extra language added to the NDAA (i.e. "The President also has the authority...") appeared to be a retroactive legislative fix "to provide the President (in 2012) with broader detention authority than was provided in the AUMF in 2001."
 
As the War on Terror has extended, so has its global scope. The plaintiffs in Hedges v. Obama are attempting to block the U.S. military's detainment powers on its own shores.
 
The bottom line, according to plaintiff lawyer Bruce Afran, is that the NDAA "is still unconstitutional because it allows citizens or persons in the U.S. to be held in military custody, a position that the Supreme Court has repeatedly held is unconstitutional."


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/stakes-of-indefinite-detention-lawsuit-2013-2#ixzz2KEvcuo87