Indefinite Detention? But I Have Soccer Practice at 4: U.S. Politics 2012

The reporter tangled with the wrong moonbeam, I guess...

lol. kinda love Jerry, even tho there has been a lot of harsh shit in his budgets (kinda unavoidable when you can't raise taxes)

Reporter: No, actually, because when Reagan came in later on, things actually changed.
(HAH GOTCHA)

Brown: No, Reagan came before me. Reagan came after my father and then I came after Reagan.

(FFFFFUUUUUUUUU...OKAY OKAY UHHHHMM)
Reporter: And then you actually lost your term thereafter, no?

Brown: No, I’m the only Democratic governor in history to serve three terms. In fact only two governors have ever served a third term.

(WHAT THE FUCK? THREE TERMS? ABORT! Aaaaand EJECT)
Reporter: So why is it then, that we’re seeing from the bankruptcy though...

have a feeling reporter was referring to Reagan presidency and then got confused by Brown referring to Reagan's terms as governor

but perhaps that's being charitable

I think you're right. But the reporter still comes off looking like he/she brought a knife to a gun fight, lol

and a butter knife at that

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/holder-expected-to-explain-rationale-for-targeting-us-citizens-abroad/2012/03/04/gIQACz41qR_story.html?hpid=z2

Greenwald will probably be responding to this for a week or more

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/03/my-forecast-barack-obama-will-be-reelected-and-he-wont-do-much

lol no way he's totally gonna be really liberal in his second term!!

Do rightwingers using that as a scare technique even believe that?

that's really hard to say

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/judges_apology_over_racist_obama_email_honestly_i_dont_know_what_else_i_can_do.php?ref=fpblg

Is this more sincere than Rush's apology?

is anyone thinking that he DID have someone else to blame, or that he WAS blaming someone else?

so, what can you tell me about angus king

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/05/democrats_suddenly_have_a_maine_headache/singleton/

Holder gave his speech this afternoon regarding targeting killing of Americans. Probably not enough detail to satisfy ACLU who want the authorizing memo

that authorization memo is gonna have to come out in open court at some point

OH NOES Rush dropped from his station in Hawaii!

mahalo

Among those condemning Limbaugh on Monday was radio host Don Imus, who lost his radio and TV jobs in 2007 for making insulting remarks about a women’s college basketball team. Said Imus on his morning program: “He owns a Gulfstream 4. Get on it, go to Washington, take her to lunch and say, ‘Look, I’m sorry I said this stuff,’ and never do it again, period. Now, he’s an insincere pig, pill-popping pinhead.”

lol smell blood in the water do ya Don

does rush really own a gulfstream 4??

he owns a 550. "with a color blended specifically for Mr. Limbaugh called Rush Gold"

http://www.werushdaily.com/page/eib-one-in-pictures

He was dropped by a station in Massachusetts as well btw.

so, what can you tell me about angus king

as long as Republican doesn't win the seat - and bring with them all the party allegiances that entails - I don't think there's much to worry about. The vote-splitting thing between King and a Dem nominee would obviously be bad news.

thanks for the update on maine politics shakey mo

lol

yr welcome

that authorization memo is gonna have to come out in open court at some point

― be scientific, douchebag (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, March 5, 2012

You think the ACLU can win on this? I can see courts letting them keep it/them secret. Today, the Washington Post is calling for the White House to release them

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-time-to-release-the-drone-memos/2012/03/05/gIQA7jVXtR_story.html

Greenwald weighs in, of course on Holder's speech, in a lengthy piece. http://www.salon.com/2012/03/06/attorney_general_holder_defends_execution_without_charges/singleton/

Charles Pierce, writing about Holder’s speech, described this best: “a monumental pile of crap that should embarrass every Democrat who ever said an unkind word about John Yoo.”

haha. A classic Greenwald-going-ham post.

You think the ACLU can win on this? I can see courts letting them keep it/them secret.

yeah I think eventually the ACLU will win. it may take a long time (ie decades) tho

there's an imperialist logic to this thing that hasn't been remarked upon much recently, to my knowledge. the phrase 'the world is a battlefield,' said either in favor or against these assassinations and their justification--everybody knows that's not really the whole world. there are not going to be hellfire attacks on islamists in, say, france or thailand or eastern europe or south america. the whole thing rests on there being countries whose own legal and physical powers are so weak that the raw assertion of american power can be seen entirely as an "american" constitutional problem.

consider the sentence "american citizen killed by CIA in yemen;" it's the "american citizen" part that's getting so much attention, but i wonder if "in yemen" isn't really the justification. "come on, the guy went to yemen, he's off the map, what difference does it make?" if you joined al-qaeda but stayed within the geography of the connected world (stayed out of SW asia or the horn of africa basically) you aren't going to have a missile dropped on you. snatched off the street with local cooperation, sure.

i'm tired as fucc so maybe this doesn't make any sense.

press: romney has called you america's most feckless prez since carter. is there anything you'd like to say to him?
b.o.: *pause* "good luck tonight"
*laughter*

ballertime.jpg

ron wyden on holder:

http://wyden.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/?id=eaf00c44-d49b-4984-a211-fdb375460a1d

For example, the government should explain exactly how much evidence the President needs in order to decide that a particular American is part of a terrorist group. It is also unclear to me whether individual Americans must be given the opportunity to surrender before lethal force is used against them. And I’m particularly concerned that the geographic boundaries of this authority have not been clearly laid out. Based on what I’ve heard so far, I can’t tell whether or not the Justice Department’s legal arguments would allow the President to order intelligence agencies to kill an American inside the United States.

gets at the geographical element i was trying to think about

only if citizen was someplace completely inaccessible, like wyoming.

of course we are never going to get a list of places where the US gov't will say they will consider killing someone and where they won't. but everybody basically knows, right??

it comes down to "can we feasibly arrest this person or not", if it's no, we can kill them. rules are made up afterward at the govt's convenience

i'm more confused by what holder means by "judicial process" as opposed to "due process" - pretty sure he completely made this part up

“Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces,” Mr. Holder said. “This is simply not accurate. ‘Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/us/politics/holder-explains-threat-that-would-call-for-killing-without-trial.html

due process could also involve administrative procedures that aren't necessarily judicial review, but he's also giving no justification for removing judicial review from a governmental action (execution) that usually requires one.

it comes down to "can we feasibly arrest this person or not",

I do not think they ever wanted to arrest Anwar al-Awlaki.

then that's little more than a rhetorical trick on holder's part. as far as i know, "due process" has been interpreted by the judiciary to mean things covered by the fifth and sixth amendments

The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.

It's high time that the Congress acted to clarify the post-9/11 law that the Bush and Obama administrations have cited to justify this shit. Because, if you take the courts out of the equation all together, all the law says is that whoever is running the executive branch atm can use all the force they think is necessary to eliminate terrorist threats to the USA, which of course becomes an unlimited power to kill anyone with no check or balance, and it's what leads to shit like this.

Yoo-hoo! Congress! How about a little action over here?

agreed. it's a bullshit excuse and holder ought to be ashamed for providing it as obama ought to be ashamed for accepting it as good enough.

haha congress.

i don't think the congress itself wants the american public to be more aware of the powers congress exercises -- it would mean americans would start to ask congress to do stuff differently

agreed. it's a bullshit excuse and holder ought to be ashamed for providing it as obama ought to be ashamed for accepting it as good enough.

― wmlynch, Tuesday, March 6, 2012 2:31 PM (3 minutes ago)

another liberal icon, harold koh, is just as complicit

Kevin Drum's suggestion:

If you want to kill a U.S. citizen outside of a traditional hot battlefield, there needs to be independent oversight. The FISA court performs this function for surveillance, and we know from experience that it rarely gets in the government's way. But at least it's technically independent and forces the executive branch to follow its own rules. It's the absolute minimum that we should require for targeted killings too.

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/03/holder-oversight-good-idea-if-youre-killing-us-citizens-doesnt-mean-were-going-allow-a

ha i can already see the ioz post about that kind of reasoning

"let's get some other arm of the state to check the right box before killing someone, the president checking the box himself is just too unseemly"

Yoo-hoo! Congress! How about a little action over here?

congress even more aggro about killing US citizens/denying due process than the executive, unfortunately

Yes. It plays well on the 6 p.m. news.