EXTRAJUDICIAL TARGETING OF AMERICANS CHALLENGED
Two civil liberties organizations said they will file a legal challenge against the government's suspected targeting for assassination of an American supporter of Al Qaeda, arguing that under the U.S. Constitution no citizen can be “deprived of life… without due process of law.”
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights first filed suit against the Treasury Department, which said they needed a “license” in order to act on behalf of Anwar al-Awlaki, who has been designated as a terrorist. After the lawsuit was filed yesterday, the Treasury Department said the license to proceed would be granted.
Meanwhile, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and several House colleagues introduced legislation last week “to prohibit the extrajudicial killing of United States citizens.”
“No United States citizen, regardless of location, can be ‘deprived of life, liberty, property, without due process of law', as stated in Article XIV of the Constitution,” their bill said. [The cited statement is actually from the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.]
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said yesterday that the targeting of al-Awlaki was not done entirely without process. “There's a process in place that I'm not at liberty to discuss,” he said.
Secrecy News Complete Online Story
Phi Beta Iota: Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney are among those who have flushed the US Constitution down the toilet, and there is a direct genealogy from them to Barack Obama and the Pelosi-Reid-Axelrod-Emanuel quartet of mendacity lite that relegates the Constitution to its outrageous current status as a quaint relic. The flag officers and Senior Executive Service (SES) have been bribed by the military -industrial complex or intimidated by political appointees whose knowledge of substance is pathetic. There is nothing wrong with America the Beautiful that cannot be fixed by the restoration of the Constitution including the Balance of Powers; we do that with the Electoral Reform Act followed by the Smart Nation Act.