Rand Paul Filibuster of Brennan Nomination

• Cleveland Buck

  

  gut;1402343 wrote:One more time, this is not some rewriting of the laws. The only thing that has changed is they can do with a drone what they've always had the power to do with the military. And it's never been done (although I'd bet money UA 93 was ordered shot down, and may actually have been shotdown). Different times as we are now dealing with not only non-state sponsored combatants, but Americans joining in. I'll take that back - there are several cases of martial law being instituted in the US, most recently in NO after Katrina.
  
  It's all just grandstanding. There's not a remotely logical or rationale reason why they wouldn't just pick someone up within our borders (which is distinctly different from behind enemy lines) UNLESS the extreme situation of imminent danger (which, again, the police would already have justification for lethal force).
  
  It's bad logic to assume they would take the path of greatest resistance to silence someone. Why use a drone when you could just send a thug to make it look like an accident? Sometimes smart people just seem to have their hot buttons that turns their brain off.

  You still don't understand.
  
  No one is debating whether or not the president had emergency powers before or has them now when we were under attack, drones or not.
  
  The administration has attacked non-combatants around the world with drones and it is policy to do so in the "battlefield".
  
  The adminitration has declared the United States a "battlefield".
  
  The administration had claimed the authority to use lethal force on U.S. citizens in the United States without distinguishing whether or not they were non-combatants and without due process of law, which is an authority the government never before claimed and an authority they will never have no matter what they claim.
  
  All discretion as to who is a combatant and how imminent the threat they are is left up to one man.
  
  Just because it hasn't been done before doesn't mean it won't be done. The drones were just part of politics, giving Rand a vehicle for the whole message, but the message is the same no matter the weapon. It is just as illegal for the government to gun down or stab or poison a citizen that is not attacking you.
• HitsRus

  

  I think some of you are missing the point...that being within the borders of the United States the government or its agencies most certainly have the ability to dispatch a military or law enforcement force to arrest those suspected of crimes and afford them due process as is guaranteed by the Constitution. If you can locate them enough to send a drone to kill them, most certainly you can send a force to arrest them. If, of course, a criminal in involved in an act that currently creates a life threatening situation, then law enforcement has the authority to use deadly force (as they do now). But you can't just kill them by ANY means when they are eating breakfast at their kitchen table just because they are a wanted criminal.
  
  Americans have rights as guaranteed by the Constitution, and you cant just start pulling threads out of the fabric of the Constitution because of short term perceived threats. Once you establish a precedent that rights can be abridged because of perceived circumstances, then nothing is sacred or secure, and any right can be swept away at any time. The Constitution stands as an intact, immutable bulwark against tryanny. You cannot pull on the strings of its fabric and expect it to remain as such.
  We have seen multiple attacks upon rights (e.g. the current attack on 2nd amendment rights) and now this. Rand Paul has stood on the floor and brought attention to the assault upon our rights that has been ongoing since the inception of the Patriot Act..and accelerated by the current administration. He has done us a great favor, and we should be grateful for the wake up call issued to all freedom loving Americans.
• justincredible

  

  HitsRus;1402389 wrote:I think some of you are missing the point...that being within the borders of the United States the government or its agencies most certainly have the ability to dispatch a military or law enforcement force to arrest those suspected of crimes and afford them due process as is guaranteed by the Constitution. If you can locate them enough to send a drone to kill them, most certainly you can send a force to arrest them. If, of course, a criminal in involved in an act that currently creates a life threatening situation, then law enforcement has the authority to use deadly force (as they do now). But you can't just kill them by ANY means when they are eating breakfast at their kitchen table just because they are a wanted criminal.
  
  Americans have rights as guaranteed by the Constitution, and you cant just start pulling threads out of the fabric of the Constitution because of short term perceived threats. Once you establish a precedent that rights can be abridged because of perceived circumstances, then nothing is sacred or secure, and any right can be swept away at any time. The Constitution stands as an intact, immutable bulwark against tryanny. You cannot pull on the strings of its fabric and expect it to remain as such.
  We have seen multiple attacks upon rights (e.g. the current attack on 2nd amendment rights) and now this. Rand Paul has stood on the floor and brought attention to the assault upon our rights that has been ongoing since the inception of the Patriot Act..and accelerated by the current administration. He has done us a great favor, and we should be grateful for the wake up call issued to all freedom loving Americans.

  Reps to you.
• justincredible

  

  Oops. I meant to say "take off the tinfoil hat, wingnut."
• gut

  HitsRus;1402389 wrote:But you can't just kill them by ANY means when they are eating breakfast at their kitchen table just because they are a wanted criminal.

  I didn't miss the point at all - Paul was grandstanding. The fact of the matter is the drone policy is not a change in policy, it's just a new tool. If the POTUS wants to silence dissidents, he's not going to do it with a very public (and rather expensive) drone missile, he'll send a thug.
  
  This is imagining the US gubmit is becoming the Gestapo, and fear mongering that the lack of Drone missiles is what has been holding them back from assassinating their critics.
  
  I find it barely short of astounding that people actually seem to believe that, if the gubmit wants to eliminate opposition, they need a drone and would only use a drone. If I had a nickel for every time Stalin said "damnit, if we ONLY had a drone..."
• gut

  Cleveland Buck;1402362 wrote: The administration had claimed the authority to use lethal force on U.S. citizens in the United States without distinguishing whether or not they were non-combatants and without due process of law, which is an authority the government never before claimed and an authority they will never have no matter what they claim.

  Precisely. That was Rand Paul's strawman.
  
  Obama and his crew weren't claiming that authority here, that was Rand Paul claiming they claimed it. First it was "imminent danger", and there's no real question the POTUS has always had that authority. Then it was "enemy combatant", and you can't legally have a policy otherwise - that was Rand Paul looking for a graceful exit from his soapbox.
  
  With regard to the question, the drone aspect is actually irrelevant. But if Rand Paul had gotten up there with a similar speech - sans drone - a few years ago he would have just looked like a crazy man.
• O-Trap

  

  gut;1402449 wrote: If the POTUS wants to silence dissidents, he's not going to do it with a very public (and rather expensive) drone missile, he'll send a thug.

  Provided we're the model of efficiency, I'd agree.
  
  However, I contend that the anticedent is false.
  
  Moreover, you're still only viewing the precedent in the here and now. This president may send a thug. Do you actually assume to know that no president would ever use such a detatched means of killing someone?
  

  gut;1402449 wrote:This is imagining the US gubmit is becoming the Gestapo, and fear mongering that the lack of Drone missiles is what has been holding them back from assassinating their critics.

  First, no, it's not imagining that the US gubmit is becoming the Gestapo. This is pointing out how fewer and fewer checks exist to prevent it from ever happening. Once again, do you claim to know that decades in the future, all presidents will be too benevolent to ever actually take advantage of virtual autonomy in this area? Given that our governmental system was set up with checks and balances in mind, I'd be hard-pressed to see the long-term safety of a policy where the people just have to take their word for it that it probably won't ever happen to any one of us.
  
  Second, you're still missing the point on a drone. If, as you say, the POTUS would use a thug to silence opposition, then what's the harm in explicitly preventing drone attacks on US citizens on US soil that are not at that moment engaged in an immediate threat to national security? What's the harm?
  

  gut;1402449 wrote:I find it barely short of astounding that people actually seem to believe that, if the gubmit wants to eliminate opposition, they need a drone and would only use a drone. If I had a nickel for every time Stalin said "damnit, if we ONLY had a drone..."

  People don't take issue because they think the government already is. They take issue with people who are okay with saying the government can, and then expecting us to just trust that it "probably" won't.
• Cleveland Buck

  

  It took a 13-hour filibuster from Senator Rand Paul to wring this terse statement from Attorney General Eric Holder:
  
  “It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: `Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?’ The answer to that question is no.”
  
  Like all statements from people who presume to rule others, this brief message from Holder – – who is Nickolai Krylenko to Obama’s Josef Stalin – should be read in terms of the supposed authority claimed thereby. This means removing useless qualifiers in the interest of clarity.
  
  What Holder is saying, in substantive terms, is that the President does have the supposed authority to use a drone to kill an American who is engaged in “combat,” whether here or abroad. "Combat" can consist of expressing support for Muslims mounting armed resistance against U.S. military aggression, which was the supposed crime committed by Anwar al-Awlaki, or sharing the surname and DNA of a known enemy of the state, which was the offense committed by Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdel. Under the rules of engagement used by the Obama Regime in Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan, any “military-age” male found within a targeted “kill zone” is likewise designated a “combatant,” albeit usually after the fact. This is a murderous application of the "Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy," and it will be used when -- not if -- Obama or a successor starts conducting domestic drone-killing operations.
  
  Holder selected a carefully qualified question in order to justify a narrowly tailored answer that reserves an expansive claim of executive power to authorize summary executions by the president. That’s how totalitarians operate.

  http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/133455.html
• Glory Days

  

  gut;1402343 wrote:One more time, this is not some rewriting of the laws. The only thing that has changed is they can do with a drone what they've always had the power to do with the military. And it's never been done (although I'd bet money UA 93 was ordered shot down, and may actually have been shotdown). Different times as we are now dealing with not only non-state sponsored combatants, but Americans joining in. I'll take that back - there are several cases of martial law being instituted in the US, most recently in NO after Katrina.
  
  It's all just grandstanding. There's not a remotely logical or rationale reason why they wouldn't just pick someone up within our borders (which is distinctly different from behind enemy lines) UNLESS the extreme situation of imminent danger (which, again, the police would already have justification for lethal force).
  
  It's bad logic to assume they would take the path of greatest resistance to silence someone. Why use a drone when you could just send a thug to make it look like an accident? Sometimes smart people just seem to have their hot buttons that turns their brain off.

  well said.
• Glory Days

  

  gut;1402449 wrote:I didn't miss the point at all - Paul was grandstanding. The fact of the matter is the drone policy is not a change in policy, it's just a new tool. If the POTUS wants to silence dissidents, he's not going to do it with a very public (and rather expensive) drone missile, he'll send a thug.
  
  This is imagining the US gubmit is becoming the Gestapo, and fear mongering that the lack of Drone missiles is what has been holding them back from assassinating their critics.
  
  I find it barely short of astounding that people actually seem to believe that, if the gubmit wants to eliminate opposition, they need a drone and would only use a drone. If I had a nickel for every time Stalin said "damnit, if we ONLY had a drone..."

  wish i could rep you more.
  

  gut;1402452 wrote:Precisely. That was Rand Paul's strawman.
  
  Obama and his crew weren't claiming that authority here, that was Rand Paul claiming they claimed it. First it was "imminent danger", and there's no real question the POTUS has always had that authority. Then it was "enemy combatant", and you can't legally have a policy otherwise - that was Rand Paul looking for a graceful exit from his soapbox.
  
  With regard to the question, the drone aspect is actually irrelevant. But if Rand Paul had gotten up there with a similar speech - sans drone - a few years ago he would have just looked like a crazy man.

  100% spot on.
• gut

  O-Trap;1402454 wrote:Provided we're the model of efficiency, I'd agree.

  LOL, fair enough
  

  O-Trap;1402454 wrote:Moreover, you're still only viewing the precedent in the here and now. This president may send a thug. Do you actually assume to know that no president would ever use such a detatched means of killing someone?

  Again, it's irrelevant to the specific topic of a drone. I contend that a POTUS intent on doing so is going to do it whether he has a drone or not.
  

  O-Trap;1402454 wrote:First, no, it's not imagining that the US gubmit is becoming the Gestapo. This is pointing out how fewer and fewer checks exist to prevent it from ever happening.

  1) What law was changed?
  2) What checks & balances have been eliminated?
  

  O-Trap;1402454 wrote:Second, you're still missing the point on a drone. If, as you say, the POTUS would use a thug to silence opposition, then what's the harm in explicitly preventing drone attacks on US citizens on US soil that are not at that moment engaged in an immediate threat to national security? What's the harm?

  Ummm, how about it's a contrived scenario with imagined re-writing of the law? It's a non-issue, that's the point of Paul grandstanding.
  

  O-Trap;1402454 wrote:People don't take issue because they think the government already is. They take issue with people who are okay with saying the government can, and then expecting us to just trust that it "probably" won't.

  The admin never said it could or would kill innocent civilians - that's pure tinfoil-hat fear-mongering. They don't have the power to re-write those laws. It's reading something into the statement - out of politics - that simply wasn't there.
  
  First, Paul asked a loaded question, one we already all knew the answer to (yes, and they could use a F16 instead of a drone):
  Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who had askedwhether the Justice Department believed President Barack Obama had the legal authority to order a targeted strike against an American citizen located within the United States.
  
  And Holder responded, stating the obvious (i.e. martial law, but probably not limited to it):
  It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States,"
  
  And then Rand Paul launches his strawman attack that they are claiming the authority - that the never had nor pretended to have - to assasinate a non-combatant US citizen. Paul could play his game for days, pretending something was implied by not being expressly prohibited, yet Holder's was a factual statement that CLEARLY does not imply a re-writing or liberal interpretation of laws.
• gut

  Cleveland Buck;1402455 wrote:Holder selected a carefully qualified question in order to justify a narrowly tailored answer that reserves an expansive claim of executive power to authorize summary executions by the president. That’s how totalitarians operate.

  And, yet, Rand Paul - Chief of the Drone assassination police - was entirely satisfied with the answer.
• gut

  Glory Days;1402462 wrote:wish i could rep you more.

  LOL, I'm not libertarian enough for this thread, I suppose.
  
  And these guys wonder why Jr. and Sr. can't win a primary. They are just as extreme, from their POV, as people on the left and right. That's just not going to give a third party traction.
• O-Trap

  

  gut;1402463 wrote:Again, it's irrelevant to the specific topic of a drone. I contend that a POTUS intent on doing so is going to do it whether he has a drone or not.

  
  
  Ultimately, I don't disagree. As you've said, leaders have done it in the past. Perhaps, then, they have no need of the power to use a drone. So why ought they have it?
  

  gut;1402463 wrote:1) What law was changed?
  2) What checks & balances have been eliminated?

  
  
  I'm not saying laws have been changed. Neither am I saying checks and balances have been eliminated. I'm suggesting that with the evolving technology and political climate, there ought to be such checks as to prevent a person from being able to act with such impugnity.
  

  gut;1402463 wrote:Ummm, how about it's a contrived scenario with imagined re-writing of the law? It's a non-issue, that's the point of Paul grandstanding.

  
  
  It's a contrived scenario because it has yet to have happened. 9/11 was a contrived scenario before it happened.
  
  And whether or not the law is changed, the fact that there's really nothing prohibiting it is the problem. As such, it will be a non-issue ... until it's an issue. I'm supposing, then, that you prefer to permit that sort of impugnity until after such time as it is abused?
  

  gut;1402463 wrote:The admin never said it could or would kill innocent civilians - that's pure tinfoil-hat fear-mongering.

  
  
  "Would" is irrelevant. "Could" isn't dictated by the admin. It's dictated by law. If law permits it, or if the DOJ or DHS perceives that the law permits it, that's enough of a problem.
  

  gut;1402463 wrote:They don't have the power to re-write those laws. It's reading something into the statement - out of politics - that simply wasn't there.

  
  
  Wasn't there? So you suggest that the scenario is not possible?
  

  gut;1402463 wrote:First, Paul asked a loaded question, one we already all knew the answer to (yes, and they could use a F16 instead of a drone):
  Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who had askedwhether the Justice Department believed President Barack Obama had the legal authority to order a targeted strike against an American citizen located within the United States.
  
  And Holder responded, stating the obvious (i.e. martial law, but probably not limited to it):
  It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States,"

  
  
  I see problems with this statement, even in the context you suggest.
  
  He uses the words "necessary" and "appropriate." These are not objective terms, so if we're using Constitutional principles (as he does say "... under the Constitution"), then I daresay assassinating any citizen without due process is not permitted unless that person is posing an imminent threat, such that choosing to arrest him blatantly puts lives at risk. Instead, what we see from the current administration involve a great deal of subjectivity. So, whose definition of "necessary" and "appropriate" are we using? The same person's who would issue such a command? I should, as I've said, think that to be far too much trust placed in one man, or even one group of men, to act benevolently.
  
  For an example, I'd cite the memo from the DOJ last month, which states the following:
  
  "Were the target of a lethal operation a U. S. citizen who may have rights under the Due Process Clause and the Fourth Amendment, that individual's citizenship would not immunize him from a lethal operation. Under traditional due process balancing analysis of Mathews v. Eldridge, we recognize that there is no private interest more weighty than a person's interest in his life. But that interest must be balanced against the United States' interest in forestalling the threat of violence and death to other Americans ..."
  
  And who decides the "balance" of that threat? Why, it's the guy who proverbially pulls the trigger, is it not?
  
  It later goes on to say, "The United States retains its authority to use force against al-Qa'ida and associated forces outside the area of active hostilities when it targets a senior operational leader of the enemy forces who is actively engaged in planning operations to kill Americans."
  
  Now, if terms like "senior operational leader" and "associated forces" weren't so damn nebulous ... AND if, again, we had 100% certain intelligence substantiating the claim ... AND if such planning was an "imminent" danger ... then perhaps this might fit the Constitution's grounds for lethal force against a US citizen without due process.
  
  However, there is no limited definition outlined in the white paper of what would be a "senior operational leader." There is no list of "associated forces." They're both essentially discretionary. Just as well, there is no requirement for confirmation or substantiation of intelligence used. And there is no requirement to determine what can be constituted as "planning."
  
  Perhaps you have so much confidence in our government to forever wield that wisely and benevolently. I'd be curious what grounds you use to assume such wisdom and benevolence.
  
• pmoney25

  

  gut;1402466 wrote:LOL, I'm not libertarian enough for this thread, I suppose.
  
  And these guys wonder why Jr. and Sr. can't win a primary. They are just as extreme, from their POV, as people on the left and right. That's just not going to give a third party traction.

  
  
  Libertarians wont win because too many people either believe that we have to police the world or spend like crazy on social programs or like most dems and repubs who believe both.
  
  This story has played out so many times through history it amazes me that people don't understand this. Maybe the next superpower will get it right.
• HitsRus

  

  it's just a new tool. If the POTUS wants to silence dissidents, he's not going to do it with a very public (and rather expensive) drone missile, he'll send a thug.
  

  Then let him do so in violation of the law at his own peril and risk of such. I don't care if he can do it now or not...we should not, nor should our justice department , give tacit approval of such an act, or give blank check legal authority.
• gut

  pmoney25;1402479 wrote:Libertarians wont win because too many people either believe that we have to police the world or spend like crazy on social programs or like most dems and repubs who believe both.

  Pretty much where we were circa 1938.
  
  Like most things, there's an optimal middle ground. The leading libertarian candidates aren't any closer to it than the liberals and right wingers. Rand Paul is telling you what you want to hear...and either he's dumb enough to actually pursue that agenda, or he's lying. He's libertarian Obama.
• HitsRus

  

  [INDENT]Oops. I meant to say "take off the tinfoil hat, wingnut." [/INDENT]

  that is a word/term that should have been entered on the "words that need to die" thread in Serious Business.
  
  That those who hold the Constitution in strict reverence should be ridiculed, by those who feel the Constitution can and should be changed on blowing/shifting winds is most disconcerting.
• justincredible

  

  HitsRus;1402509 wrote:that is a word/term that should have been entered on the "words that need to die" thread in Serious Business.
  
  That those who hold the Constitution in strict reverence should be ridiculed, by those who feel the Constitution can and should be changed on blowing/shifting winds is most disconcerting.

  No argument there.
• justincredible

  

  gut;1402466 wrote:LOL, I'm not libertarian enough for this thread, I suppose.
  
  And these guys wonder why Jr. and Sr. can't win a primary. They are just as extreme, from their POV, as people on the left and right. That's just not going to give a third party traction.

  Damn. Senator McCain AND Senator Graham are both members here?
• fish82

  

  justincredible;1402522 wrote:Damn. Senator McCain AND Senator Graham are both members here?

  McCain and Graham are seriously dialing up the hissy over this.
• Cleveland Buck

  

  justincredible;1402522 wrote:Damn. Senator McCain AND Senator Graham are both members here?

  Luckily they are a dying breed. Hopefully Graham is primaried out of the senate, and McCain will be dead soon anyway.
• justincredible

  

  fish82;1402543 wrote:McCain and Graham are seriously dialing up the hissy over this.

  Cleveland Buck;1402546 wrote:Luckily they are a dying breed. Hopefully Graham is primaried out of the senate, and McCain will be dead soon anyway.

  Indeed. They can both piss off.
  
  
• Cleveland Buck

  

  
• fish82

  

  justincredible;1402598 wrote:Indeed. They can both piss off.
  
  

  Mas reppage.