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<h2 class="title"><font style="font-size:10pt" face="Tahoma " size="2"><a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/31" target="_blank">http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/31</a></font></h2><h2 class="title"><font style="font-size:16pt" size="4">Obama At Large: Where Are The Lawyers?</font></h2>
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<font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">by </font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><a href="http://www.commondreams.org/ralph-nader" target="_blank">Ralph Nader</a><br><br></font> </div>
<font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">The rule of law is rapidly breaking down at the top levels of our
government. As officers</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> of the court, we have sworn to “support the
Constitution,” which clearly implies an </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">affirmative commitment on our
part.</font><br><br>
<font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">Take the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The
conservative</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> American Bar Association sent three white papers to
President Bush describing his </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">continual unconstitutional policies. Then
and now civil liberties groups and a few law </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">professors, such as the
stalwart David Cole of Georgetown University and Jonathan</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> Turley of
George Washington University, have distinguished themselves in calling
out</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> both presidents for such violations and the necessity for enforcing
the rule of law.</font><br>
<font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><br></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">Sadly, the bulk of our profession, as individuals and through their
bar associations,</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> has remained quietly on the sidelines. They have
turned away from their role as</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> “first-responders” to protect the
Constitution from its official violators.</font><br>
<br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">As a youngster in Hawaii, basketball player Barack Obama was
nicknamed by his </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">schoolboy chums as “Barry O’Bomber,” according to the </font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><em>Washington Post</em></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">. Tuesday’s </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">(May 29) </font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><em>New York Times</em></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">
published a massive page-one feature article by Jo </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">Becker and Scott
Shane, that demonstrated just how inadvertently prescient was</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> this
moniker. This was not an adversarial, leaked newspaper scoop. The
article</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> had all the signs of cooperation by the three dozen, interviewed
current and</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">former advisers to President Obama and his administration.
The reporters wrote</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> that a weekly role of the president is to personally
select and order a “kill list” of</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> suspected terrorists or militants via
drone strikes or other means. The reporters</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">wrote that this personal
role of Obama’s is “without precedent in presidential</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> history.”
Adversaries are pulling him into more and more countries – Pakistan, <br></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">Yemen, Somalia and other territories.</font><br>
<font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><br></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">The drones have killed civilians, families with small children, and
even allied</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> soldiers in this undeclared war based on secret “facts” and
grudges (getting</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> even). These attacks are justified by secret legal
memos claiming that the</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> president, without any Congressional
authorization, can without any limitations</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> other that his say-so, target
far and wide assassinations of any “suspected</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> terrorist,” including
American citizens.</font><br>
<font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><br></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">The bombings by Mr. Obama, as secret prosecutor, judge, jury and </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">
executioner, trample proper constitutional authority, separation of
powers, </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">and checks and balances and constitute repeated impeachable
offenses. <br></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">That is, if a pathetic Congress ever decided to uphold its
constitutional</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> responsibility, including and beyond Article I, section
8’s war-declaring powers.</font><br>
<font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><span class="ecxpullquote">The bombings by Mr. Obama, as secret
prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner, </span></font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><span class="ecxpullquote">trample proper constitutional
authority, separation of powers, and checks and </span></font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><span class="ecxpullquote">balances and constitute
repeated impeachable offenses. That is, if a pathetic</span></font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><span class="ecxpullquote"> Congress ever
decided to uphold its constitutional responsibility, including and</span></font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><span class="ecxpullquote">
beyond Article I, section 8’s war-declaring powers.</span></font><br>
<br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">As if lawyers needed any reminding, the Constitution is the
foundation of our</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> legal system and is based on declared, open boundaries
of permissible</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> government actions. That is what a government of law,
not of men, means.</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> Further our system is clearly demarked by independent
review of executive</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> branch decisions – by our courts and Congress.</font><br><br>
<font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">What happens if Congress becomes, in constitutional lawyer Bruce
Fein’s </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">words, “an ink blot,” and the courts beg off with their wholesale
dismissals </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">of Constitutional matters based on claims and issue involves
a “political</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> question” or that parties have “no-standing-to-sue.” What
happens is what</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">is happening. The situation worsens every year,
deepening dictatorial </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">secretive decisions by the White House, and not
just regarding foreign and</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> military policies.</font><br>
<font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><br></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">The value of </font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><em>The New York Times</em></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> article is that it added ascribed</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> commentary on what was reported. Here is a sample:</font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><br></font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">- The U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter, quoted by a </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">colleague as complaining about the CIA’s strikes driving American policy </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">commenting that he: “didn’t realize his main job was to kill people.”</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">
Imagine what the sidelined Foreign Service is thinking about greater</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">
longer-range risks to our national security.</font><br>
<font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><br></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">- Dennis Blair, former Director of National Intelligence, calls the
strike</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> campaign “dangerously seductive.” He said that Obama’s obsession</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">
with targeted killings is “the politically advantageous thing to do —
low</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> cost, no US casualties, gives the appearance of toughness. It plays</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">
well domestically, and it is unpopular only in other countries. Any </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">damage it does to the national interest only shows up over the long</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">
term.” Blair, a retired admiral, has often noted that intense focus on</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">
strikes sidelines any long-term strategy against al-Qaeda which</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> spreads
wider with each drone that vaporizes civilians.</font><br>
<br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">- Former CIA director Michael Hayden decries the secrecy: “This</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">
program rests on the personal legitimacy of the president and that’s </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">not
sustainable,” he told the </font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><em>Times</em></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">. “Democracies do not make war</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> on the basis of legal memos locked in a D.O.J. [Department of Justice]</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> safe.”</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><br></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">Consider this: an allegedly liberal former constitutional law
lecturer is </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">being cautioned about blowback, the erosion of democracy and
the</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> national security by former heads of super-secret spy agencies!</font><br>
<font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><br></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">Secrecy-driven violence in government breeds fear and surrender of</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">
conscience. When Mr. Obama was campaigning for president in 2007,</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> he was
reviled by Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden Jr. and Mitt Romney – then <br></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">presidential candidates – for declaring that even if Pakistan leaders </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">
objected, he would go after terrorist bases in Pakistan. Romney said he</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">
had “become Dr. Strangelove,” according to the </font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><em>Times</em></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">. Today all three</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> of candidate Obama’s critics have decided to go along with egregious</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">violations of our Constitution.</font><br>
<br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">The </font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><em>Times </em></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">made the telling point that Obama’s orders now
“can target</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> suspects in Yemen whose names they do not know.” Such is the
drift to</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> one-man rule, consuming so much of his time in this way at the
expense</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> of addressing hundreds of thousands of preventable fatalities
yearly here</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> in the U.S. from occupational disease, environmental
pollution, hospital</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> infections and other documented dangerous
conditions.</font><br>
<font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><br></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">Based on deep reporting, Becker and Shane allowed that “both Pakistan </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">and Yemen are arguably less stable and more hostile to the United</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">
States than when Obama became president.”</font><br><br>
<font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">In a world of lawlessness, force will beget force, which is what the
CIA </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">means by “blowback.” Our country has the most to lose when we
abandon</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> the rule of law and embrace lawless violence that is banking
future </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">revenge throughout the world.</font><br>
<br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">The people in the countries we target know what we must remember. We</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">
are their occupiers, their invaders, the powerful supporters for decades
of </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">their own brutal tyrants. We’re in their backyard, which more than
any</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> other impetus spawned al-Qaeda in the first place.</font><br>
<font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"><br></font><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">So lawyers of America, apart from a few stalwarts among you, what is
your </font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">breaking point? When will you uphold your oath of office and work
to restore</font><br><font style="font-size:12pt" size="3"> constitutional authorities and boundaries?</font> <font style="font-size:12pt" size="3">Someday, people will ask – where <br>were the lawyers?</font><br><br><br>###<br> </div></div> </div></div> </div></body>
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