U.S. Constitution
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Title: The Collapse of American Democracy
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URL Source: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article33551.html
Published: Mar 13, 2012
Author: Barry_Grey
Post Date: 2012-03-13 14:09:42 by Capitalist Eric
Keywords: None
Views: 1980
Comments: 3
One week ago, US Attorney General Eric Holder delivered a speech asserting the right of the president to secretly order the assassination of American citizens. Citing the so-called “war on terror,” he claimed that this never-before-asserted authority was lawful under the president’s war-making powers and was not subject to judicial review.
Holder stressed that the president’s power to order extra-judicial killings was part of a range of powers including the abduction of suspected terrorists and their indefinite internment, without trial, either in civilian or military prisons. Having noted that terrorists “reside within our own borders,” he insisted that the government’s authority to use lethal force was “not limited to the battlefields of Afghanistan.”
In an attempt to give a constitutional gloss to this assertion of police-state powers, Holder made the astonishing assertion that “due process and judicial process are not one and the same… The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”
The speech was in response to pressure on the administration to provide a legal rationale for the targeted killing of three US citizens in Yemen last fall. Anwar al-Alawki, an alleged Al Qaeda leader, was killed in a drone attack along with another US citizen, Samir Khan. Two weeks later, Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman Alawki, was killed in a separate drone attack.
One would think that such a sweeping and extraordinary speech, asserting the right of the US government to summarily kill its own citizens, would become the focus of political discussion and the topic of heated debate. In fact, the media and the political establishment virtually ignored it. None of the three network news programs mentioned it. Articles in the major newspapers reporting the speech were relegated to the inside pages.
Last Tuesday, the day after Holder’s speech, Obama held his first White House news conference of the year. Not a single reporter asked Obama about the speech or raised the issue of presidential assassinations.
It is a measure of how far the decay of American democracy has progressed that some four decades ago the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Richard Nixon for “abuse of power” and “violating the constitutional rights of citizens” by ordering punitive tax audits and illegal wiretaps. Today, when the arrogation of dictatorial powers has reached the point of ordering the extra-judicial murder of citizens, there are not only no calls for impeachment, the issue is not even the subject of debate.
It took the New York Times six days to comment on the attorney general’s speech. What it produced in an editorial published Sunday is a statement raising objections of a minor and procedural character while endorsing Holder’s basic argument and evading any consideration of its immense and ominous constitutional implications.
“A president has a right to order lethal force against conventional enemies during conventional war,” the Times declares, “or against unconventional enemies in unconventional wars.” [Emphasis added]. This is a blanket endorsement of the “war on terror” and the US government’s proclaimed right under that pretext to murder those who run afoul of American imperialist interests.
The newspaper acknowledges that President Obama “has become the first president to claim the legal authority to order an American citizen killed without judicial involvement, real oversight or public accountability.” It takes issue with Holder’s distinction between due process and judicial process, writing, “The executive acting in secret as the police, prosecutor, jury, judge and executioner is the antithesis of due process.”
But, according to the Times, this problem can be overcome and due process restored simply by setting up a new secret court along the lines of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), which routinely sanctions the unconstitutional surveillance of US citizens, to provide a judicial fig leaf for state murder. The Times’s cynicism and contempt for constitutional rights are on full display when it cites the fact that “the FISA court works with great speed and rarely rejects a warrant request” to argue that a new star chamber would not “slow a strike on a terrorist.”
Nowhere does the Times make a clear statement that Obama’s policies are unconstitutional and a violation of his oath of office, which commits the president to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. The Fifth Amendment is unequivocal in outlawing such things as detention without trial, torture and extra-judicial killings. Its injunction that “No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” is perfectly clear.
The editorial concludes by urging the administration to publish the Justice Department memo that set forth the supposed legal basis for assassinating the three US citizens in Yemen. “We cannot imagine why Mr. Obama would want to follow the horrible example set by Mr. Bush in withholding such vital information from the public,” the newspaper writes disingenuously.
This is an approach that treats such momentous questions as the shredding of the Constitution on the superficial level of personalities. In reality, such developments can only be the outcome of deep-going historical and social processes. The astonishing rapidity with which the entire edifice of constitutional checks and balances and democratic rights has collapsed over the past decade shows that this process is rooted in the underlying contradictions of American society.
The United States is run by a plutocracy whose existence stands in violent conflict with the most basic needs of the people. Along with the social counterrevolution being carried out in its interests is a legal counterrevolution.
The adage of Lenin that imperialism is “reaction all down the line” is being confirmed every day by the spread of militarism and war, the assault on jobs and living standards, and the turn to state repression and dictatorial forms of rule. Democratic rights can be defended today only through the mass mobilization of the working class in the fight for socialism.
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The lib hovering mother ship is collapsing !
We're about to see the phoenix final age rising !
If you ... don't use exclamation points --- you should't be typeing ! Commas - semicolons - question marks are for girlie boys !
#2. To: BorisY, *Ron Paul for President* (#1)
We're about to see the phoenix final age rising !
The Mormon messiah will save you!
Mittens has got your Phoenix Rising
"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul
Obama's watch stopped on 24 May 2008, but he's been too busy smoking crack to notice.
#3. To: hondo68 (#2)
It seemed that indeed the truth would be 'forever on the scaffold, and wrong forever on the throne'.
With great eagerness he listened to the query, 'How long shall be the vision?'(Daniel 8:13)."
Daniel and the Coming King
Chapter 16
The Gospel In Daniel 9:24
By Dr.Desmond Ford
"It would be tragic if we contented ourselves with an analytical examination of this passage of Scripture. It is not merely a scintillating gem to be admired, but the bread of life to be eaten. It consists of 'the everlasting gospel' in minature."
"That which should concern us all the more than the issues of hermeneutics is the issue of life---our life. Not minutiae of prophetic interpretation, but sin, sorrow, and death constitute our problems.
Daniel 9:24 assures us that the world is a ship and not an iceberg, that God is intensely interested in our dilemma, and, best of all, that He has done something to extricate us from the apparent cul-de-sac of existence.
In Christ, the Melchizedekan King-Priest, He has brought in everlasting righteousness, freely offered to all who believe."
Chapter 14
Daniel and the Coming King---Daniel 9
By Dr.Desmond Ford
"Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest of scientists prior to the modern period, wrote a commentary upon the prohecies of Daniel and Revelations. He desribed Daniel 9:24-27 as "the foudation-stone of the Christian religion" because centuries in advance it gave the time of appearance of the Messiah and His death, as well as a comprehensive description of His saving work in heaven and earth. The prophecy likewise tells what would be the fate of the Jews consequent upon their rejection of the One whose coming they had long anticpated. The destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, foretold in Daniel 9:24-27, was history's testimony that the offerings and services of the sanctuary had met their fulfillment in the advent of the promised Messiah."
Newton, Isaac. Observsations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalpse of St. John. London: J. Darby and T. Browne, 1733 (Isaac Newton)
Chapter 14
Daniel and the Coming King---Daniel 9
by Dr.Desmond Ford
Seal Up the Vision
"The expression 'to seal up the vision' (v.24) should be considered. This expression, 'the vision', occurs eleven times in Daniel 8:1 to 10:1, and in all these cases it refers to the vision described in the eighth chapter of Daniel. The reader is advised to read again the entire passage. In pictorial, symbolic form the prophet was shown the unfolding of all future centuries till the second advent of Christ. The famous empires, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, which long oppressed the people of God, are described; but particular emphasis is given to the persecution of the church during the Christian era and also to the supremacy of the couterfeit, apostate religion over most of that period. Christ's mediatorial ministry in heaven is alluded to, but its eclipse from men's mind through a counterfeit system is fortold. The sanctuary mentioned refers both to the church temple indwelt by the Holy Spirit on earth, as well as Israel's typical sanctuary. No doubt Daniel was dazed by this revelation of the apparent triumph of evil. In his lifetime he had witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem's temple, the center of true religion, and the carrying into captivity of the people of God by an idolatrous and desolating nation. Now in vision he is informed that this state of affairs is to continue on a much greater scale throughout most of the earth's history. It seemed that indeed the truth would be 'forever on the scaffold, and wrong forever on the throne'. With great eagerness he listened to the query, 'How long shall be the vision?'(Daniel 8:13)."
"Now in the revelation of 9:24-27 the mourning seer is told that there is a greater Prince of the house of Judah, a greater atonement, a greater sanctuary, and a greater redemption than any ever before experienced by Israel. The long- awaited Messiah, the Prince, a Priest-King, will take away the sin of the world and end earth's dark night. Thus 9:24 and 8:14 point to the same reality---the kingdom of God ignaugurated at the first advent and consummated at the second."
If you ... don't use exclamation points --- you should't be typeing ! Commas - semicolons - question marks are for girlie boys !
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