Tapper vs. Carney: Was Awlaki Death Constitutional? (Video)

ABC News ^ | 9/30/11 | Jake Tapper

[Bokababe]

Tapper to Carney: "Do you not see at all... does the Administration not see at all how a president asserting that he has the right to kill an American citizen without due process and that he's not going to even explain why he thinks that he has that right, is troublesome to some people?"...

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=14642685

[muawiyah]

I prefer having a CIC who can repel invasions and kill enemies where they stand ~ which is what Obama seemed to be doing in this case.

Last thing we should do is give the courts authority over battlefield decisions. In fact, judges who suppose they have such authority should be removed from office.

[Carry_Okie]

The man was merely born here. He was not a citizen.

By the current and unconstitutional) standards of American law, that makes him an American citizen.

[muawiyah]

Back when he was born the FAMILY VISA was in use. The instructions were to add any kiddies born here to YOUR FAMILY VISA.

Now there are some pretty practical reasons for doing this ~ one is that you can get the kid out of the country when you leave (and it might be many months before a student and his spouse leave the country) and probably get the kid into your own country on arrival.

Remember, the kid didn't have a passport when he left eh!

So, think about this ~ State Department said add a new baby to your visa. At the same time American citizens do not require visas to be here.

So, what does that mean?

Perhaps it means that State Department didn't consider all these babies to be American citizens not so long ago.

Plus, the parents were here legally ~ not illegally.

Maybe illegal aliens have rights superior to legal aliens?

Frankly, the whole birthright citizenship thing rests on a presumption that the individual can make a choice about it ~ LATER. Sure, the kid may become eligible for US citizenship at some time in the future but he has to assert that right in some way.

This is why it is vital that we head them off at the pass and force them to get a visa to be here. I've proposed we issue visas for illegal aliens ~ whether they hold them or not ~ that establishes a category for them and their children and other dependents.

The category would not be a good one since the visa would only last until they departed the country, but would limit their lawful activities in the country to eating, drinking, using toilets and showers and wearing clothes PLUS, the big one, heading toward home real darned quick.

[cruise_missile]

The ACLU will put the lowest guy in the office to go after this. But it won't be a high priority.

The about face has been very amusing. I think some people on this thread have missed the point entirely.

Obama has changed his views on(remember when):

- Reading combatants their Miranda rights.

- Closing of Gitmo.

- Military trials (Gitmo) vs. Civil trials (New York).

- Indefinite Detention.

- Enhanced Interrogation techniques.

- The Patriot Act.

- The Iraqi surge.

- Killing American citizens..

[Carry_Okie]

Frankly, the whole birthright citizenship thing rests on a presumption that the individual can make a choice about it ~ LATER.

Worse, it rests upon the presumption that the United States has a claim on the child whether or not the alien parents of that child so desire. It is akin to a press gang operation or the claim of a liege lord, having no reasonable place in American law. If you haven't read Fuller's opinion cited in the article I linked, you should.

[muawiyah]

At some point in time we ran out of people who'd been slaves or born to slaves ~ so the birthright clause ceased to have its intended effect ~ making citizens of children born to slaves or former slaves.

Considering the fact one of my elder cousins with whom I had regular correspondence for many years (on one side of the family) had been married to a great grandfather on a different side and he'd been a prisoner in Andersonville POW camp, the era when the 14th amendment was adopted simply isn't as far in the past as most folks imagine.

No one ever imagined that Mexicans born just over the line were American citizens then one day somebody in INS issued an administrative determination ~

I know there are other imaginings that you can deduce all of this from previous court rulings but the conditions in those cases are so constrained and narrow you simply can't expand it to the all inclusive consideration we now find so common.

For all practical purposes the "birthright" clause was blown out of proportion.

It's long overdue to remove the resultant administrative standard ~ issued in error by State Department ~ and turn this thing around.

[Carry_Okie]

It's long overdue to remove the resultant administrative standard ~ issued in error by State Department ~ and turn this thing around.

Pursuant to US v. Wong Kim Ark, of which Chief Justice Fuller's dissenting opinion, is well worth your time to read. It is not a document so temporal as you suggest.

[Carry_Okie]

Last thing we should do is give the courts authority over battlefield decisions. In fact, judges who suppose they have such authority should be removed from office.

If there are American citizens on that battlefield in an adversary role, it would be well known and there should be a blanket ruling in advance. Even a statute deeming such an action legal when outside the borders of the US would be appropriate. Executive action alone is not.

[Chode]

another piece to the puzzle...

[muawiyah]

Kim ~ this is the case where the guy's parents were legally permanent residents of the United States.

The case may have said a lot of things but it didn't address the issue of when the parents were not legally present!

[hinckley buzzard]

It is entertaining to watch Tapper pimp this Carney a-hole, but that's all it is. None of it goes anywhere because none of the zombies sitting behind him give a sh*t.

[Bokababe]

Thank you, Nathan, for your kind compliments. Yes, I knew that this would be controversial, but I also hoped that it would make us think twice about all the power that we are allowing to be invested in the office of president, independent of the personalities involved.

The framers quite consciously created a divided government of checks and balances precisely to prevent the coalescence of legislative, executive, prosecutorial, and warmaking powers in one individual or even in one branch. If we have come to a place where the president of the United States can order the assassination of American citizens by merely invoking a label, "war" we are on the verge of abandoning the Constitution.

Excellent points! Yes, but the public today seem to regard that system of checks and balances as "government red tape". The Constitution gets defended in theory but not in practice and both the Left and Right want to treat it like a Chinese food menu.

We been slipping down the slippery slope so long that now, a president can declare war on his own without the requirement of Congressional approval, and no one utters a peep -- we just get the bill and a whole lot of propaganda about why "they deserve what they got". We've allowed a president to go off and attack another country without being forced to answer to Congress -- and not even the American people have a problem with it as long as it is under this vague, nebulous "War on Terror" title or the other equally nebulous "International Responsibility to Protect".

Now, we are also allowing a president to specifically target an American citizen for death, deny him any right to a defense and just kill him based on "guilt by association" and exercising his "freedom of speech". (There is no evidence that we've seen that Awlaki killed anyone -- other than preach against the US and hang out with bad guys.) And not only did he do it, Obama is bragging about it, expecting congratulations and even getting it from so called conservatives! God Help us!

Again, let me restate it -- I'm glad a bad guy like Awlaki got what he probably had coming -- if they had just killed him in a raid on the enemy camp, I'd have no problem with it. It's the fact that an American citizen was specifically targeted for death on nothing more than the president's word, with any defense due him denied, and then that president brags about how tough he is and refuses to even show us any evidence that would warrant such a unique action, that troubles me.

Given all the powers we allowing a president, why don't we just crown him "king" or "dictator' and get it over with? It's what most people on both sides of the aisle seem to want from a president -- and a presidential candidate

I remember a time when politicians and political commentators felt the need to question and defend certain principles like what Jake Tapper does here -- not just report the news that fit their personal agenda -- it was the norm, now it's the exception.

I remember a time when a Conservative ex-governor named Ronald Reagan shocked and stopped other Conservatives in their tracks as they were about to pass something called the Briggs Amendment that would have barred "homosexuals and their sympathizers" from teaching in California schools. Reagan was about to run for president, but he risked it all to defend against guilt by association and against using the word of children as a political weapon that could destroy someone's life. Right or wrong, that took guts -- something that people of the time admired him for. Today, we praise the gutless politicians who cater to our egos and tell us what we want to hear.

I remember a TV show with Buckley and Vidal in one of their arguments. Buckley defended a principle even though he openly admitted that he didn't live up to it. Of course, Vidal accused him of being "a hypocrite", but it was Buckley's response that stayed with me for the last 40+ years. Buckley said the equivalent of, "We, as people and as a country, need to strive to meet ideals and live by principles, even if we sometimes fail and get called hypocrites. Because if we don't at least try, we will never be better than we are and indeed risk being far worse than we are." I wasn't a Buckley fan at the time, but what he said stayed with me.

I share much of your opinion about Ron Paul even though I have published many replies dismissing him as a potential candidate on the basis of electability but not, certainly, because he lacks constitutional principle.

That's the rub. Ron Paul is eminently electable -- even ignored by the news media and trashed by the GOP -- he is still a top tier candidate that bests Obama in several polls. Even the aggregate polls put him in the top three in terms of electability. It's that the GOP elite rejects Ron Paul -- because they know that if he is elected, the games and horsetrading days and the bailouts are over -- which is why they will fight tooth and nail to shove any one of the others down our throats -- and Republicans, even Tea Partyers, will likely swallow. I honestly think that the GOP elite would rather deliberately lose an election and return Obama to office than support Ron Paul for president --and their unwitting and well manipulated supporters echo their sentiments.

The very reasons that the GOP hierarchy hates Ron Paul is the very reason that his supporters love him -- because he stands his ground on Constitutional principles, even when it's tough because he's alone out there, and he knows that his detractors are going to twist his position into what it's not. The guy actually puts himself on the line for Constitutional principles he's been consistently defending for the last 35 years. And, if anyone watches his predictions from 10 or 20 years ago on youtube, those principles and issues he's defended have proven to be correct over and over.

In 2008, the GOP backed pragmatism over principles and lost. Obama talked principles (his talk was cheap & his "principles" proved to be "flexible" & Marxist) and won. But once more, the GOP is likely going to offer the pragmatic candidate, hoping that the American people will be so disillusioned that they will have given up on "that stupid principles" thing. And the results will either be a devastating loss or a pyrrhic victory where Party will once again trump principles -- and America loses no matter what. That makes me very sad, Nathan, very sad.

[Gunslingr3]

I prefer having a CIC who can repel invasions and kill enemies where they stand

And when he calls you an enemy of the state, what then? Should his mere declaration be grounds enough, without any review, to execute you?

Are you opposed to illegal immigration? Anti-gun legislation? Abortion? You might already be a terrorist candidate in the eyes of the DHS...

[muawiyah]

Hey, we still control the House and the USSC.

You do realize that the world doesn't collapse into a barbaric heap at a moment's notice ~ it takes time.

[Gunslingr3]

Hey, we still control the House and the USSC.

Both of which the president just bypassed.

You do realize that the world doesn't collapse into a barbaric heap at a moment's notice ~ it takes time.

You're right. It takes precedents like the one we just witnessed built upon one another. So I ask again, since you ducked the question, when he calls you an enemy of the state, what then? Should his mere declaration be grounds enough, without any review, to execute you?

[muawiyah]

We had to shoot nearly 700,000 Confederate Army troops to keep the country.

Every single one of them was an American Citizen.

Not only that THEY LIVED HERE.

This particular puke didn't live here, didn't claim America as his homeland (He's a member of a tribe in Yemen), and never did all the things you'd suppose a citizen would do.

I think you are making a mountain out of a mole's pimple.

[KDD]

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.

Daniel Webster
US Diplomat, Lawyer, Orator, Politician & Partiot (1782 - 1852)

[Bokababe]

Excellent quote! Thanks!

[Bellflower]

He wouldn’t want to have a citizen/not a citizen discussion. He has enough problems without THAT coming back up.

Ironic that the same question wants to come up for him in a different format.

[Bellflower]

So now that the left has found that this guy was too dangerous to the US to go on living, are they equally willing to admit that the Fort Hood massacre was an act of outrageous terrorism perpetrated on Obama’s watch?

Excellent point!!!