[GPSCC-chat] Nader Nails It!

[Brian Good]

(Resent to correct formatting)





	http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/31Obama At Large: Where Are The Lawyers?
			
		
									
						
			  by  Ralph Nader

			
				

  
  

		
			The rule of law is rapidly breaking down at the top levels of our 
government. As officers
 of the court, we have sworn to “support the 
Constitution,” which clearly implies an 
affirmative commitment on our 
part.


Take the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The 
conservative
 American Bar Association sent three white papers to 
President Bush describing his 
continual unconstitutional policies. Then 
and now civil liberties groups and a few law 
professors, such as the 
stalwart David Cole of Georgetown University and Jonathan
 Turley of 
George Washington University, have distinguished themselves in calling 
out
 both presidents for such violations and the necessity for enforcing 
the rule of law.


Sadly, the bulk of our profession, as individuals and through their 
bar associations,
 has remained quietly on the sidelines. They have 
turned away from their role as
 “first-responders” to protect the 
Constitution from its official violators.


As a youngster in Hawaii, basketball player Barack Obama was 
nicknamed by his 
schoolboy chums as “Barry O’Bomber,” according to the Washington Post. Tuesday’s 
(May 29) New York Times
 published a massive page-one feature article by Jo 
Becker and Scott 
Shane, that demonstrated just how inadvertently prescient was
 this 
moniker. This was not an adversarial, leaked newspaper scoop. The 
article
 had all the signs of cooperation by the three dozen, interviewed
 current and
former advisers to President Obama and his administration. 
The reporters wrote
 that a weekly role of the president is to personally
 select and order a “kill list” of
 suspected terrorists or militants via
 drone strikes or other means. The reporters
wrote that this personal 
role of Obama’s is “without precedent in presidential
 history.” 
Adversaries are pulling him into more and more countries – Pakistan, 
Yemen, Somalia and other territories.


The drones have killed civilians, families with small children, and 
even allied
 soldiers in this undeclared war based on secret “facts” and 
grudges (getting
 even). These attacks are justified by secret legal 
memos claiming that the
 president, without any Congressional 
authorization, can without any limitations
 other that his say-so, target
 far and wide assassinations of any “suspected
 terrorist,” including 
American citizens.


The bombings by Mr. Obama, as secret prosecutor, judge, jury and 

executioner, trample proper constitutional authority, separation of 
powers, 
and checks and balances and constitute repeated impeachable 
offenses. 
That is, if a pathetic Congress ever decided to uphold its 
constitutional
 responsibility, including and beyond Article I, section 
8’s war-declaring powers.

The bombings by Mr. Obama, as secret 
prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner, 
trample proper constitutional 
authority, separation of powers, and checks and 
balances and constitute 
repeated impeachable offenses. That is, if a pathetic
 Congress ever 
decided to uphold its constitutional responsibility, including and

beyond Article I, section 8’s war-declaring powers.


As if lawyers needed any reminding, the Constitution is the 
foundation of our
 legal system and is based on declared, open boundaries
 of permissible
 government actions. That is what a government of law, 
not of men, means.
 Further our system is clearly demarked by independent
 review of executive
 branch decisions – by our courts and Congress.


What happens if Congress becomes, in constitutional lawyer Bruce 
Fein’s 
words, “an ink blot,” and the courts beg off with their wholesale
 dismissals 
of Constitutional matters based on claims and issue involves
 a “political
 question” or that parties have “no-standing-to-sue.” What 
happens is what
is happening. The situation worsens every year, 
deepening dictatorial 
secretive decisions by the White House, and not 
just regarding foreign and
 military policies.


The value of The New York Times article is that it added ascribed
 commentary on what was reported. Here is a sample:

- The U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter, quoted by a 
colleague as complaining about the CIA’s strikes driving American policy 
commenting that he: “didn’t realize his main job was to kill people.”
 
Imagine what the sidelined Foreign Service is thinking about greater
 
longer-range risks to our national security.


- Dennis Blair, former Director of National Intelligence, calls the 
strike
 campaign “dangerously seductive.” He said that Obama’s obsession
 
with targeted killings is “the politically advantageous thing to do — 
low
 cost, no US casualties, gives the appearance of toughness. It plays
 
well domestically, and it is unpopular only in other countries. Any 
damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long
 
term.” Blair, a retired admiral, has often noted that intense focus on
 
strikes sidelines any long-term strategy against al-Qaeda which
 spreads 
wider with each drone that vaporizes civilians.


- Former CIA director Michael Hayden decries the secrecy: “This
 
program rests on the personal legitimacy of the president and that’s 
not
 sustainable,” he told the Times. “Democracies do not make war
 on the basis of legal memos locked in a D.O.J. [Department of Justice]
 safe.”

Consider this: an allegedly liberal former constitutional law 
lecturer is 
being cautioned about blowback, the erosion of democracy and
 the
 national security by former heads of super-secret spy agencies!


Secrecy-driven violence in government breeds fear and surrender of
 
conscience. When Mr. Obama was campaigning for president in 2007,
 he was
 reviled by Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden Jr. and Mitt Romney – then 
presidential candidates – for declaring that even if Pakistan leaders 

objected, he would go after terrorist bases in Pakistan. Romney said he
 
had “become Dr. Strangelove,” according to the Times. Today all three
 of candidate Obama’s critics have decided to go along with egregious
violations of our Constitution.


The Times made the telling point that Obama’s orders now 
“can target
 suspects in Yemen whose names they do not know.” Such is the
 drift to
 one-man rule, consuming so much of his time in this way at the
 expense
 of addressing hundreds of thousands of preventable fatalities 
yearly here
 in the U.S. from occupational disease, environmental 
pollution, hospital
 infections and other documented dangerous 
conditions.


Based on deep reporting, Becker and Shane allowed that “both Pakistan 
and Yemen are arguably less stable and more hostile to the United
 
States than when Obama became president.”


In a world of lawlessness, force will beget force, which is what the 
CIA 
means by “blowback.” Our country has the most to lose when we 
abandon
 the rule of law and embrace lawless violence that is banking 
future 
revenge throughout the world.


The people in the countries we target know what we must remember. We
 
are their occupiers, their invaders, the powerful supporters for decades
 of 
their own brutal tyrants. We’re in their backyard, which more than 
any
 other impetus spawned al-Qaeda in the first place.


So lawyers of America, apart from a few stalwarts among you, what is 
your 
breaking point? When will you uphold your oath of office and work 
to restore
 constitutional authorities and boundaries?  Someday, people will ask – where 
were the lawyers?


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