George W Bush

The Audacity Of Drones: Keeping Americans Uninformed (Part 4)

February 14, 2013 By David Fiorazo Leave a Comment

After four years of the Obama administration’s increasing use of remote-controlled, unmanned drones to kill our enemies, there are suddenly a few more in the media feeling obligated to report on the policy.

A new set of ethical issues is being discussed. The FAA is looking into how to regulate what some call ‘the drone age.’ When liberals say things like ‘Bush would have been impeached if he did what Obama is doing,” rest assured it’s newsworthy and conservatives should jump on the story.

Tina Brown, editor for the Daily Beast/Newsweek basically admitted to media hypocrisy saying:

“He’d be impeached by now for drones if he was George W. Bush… a Republican president; the outcry about drones would be far greater.”

Recently, memos on the president’s drone-use policy were released, perhaps to make Obama look stronger in fighting terror. Ironically, when first elected, Obama used the word “terror” only once in his 2009 inaugural address. Times have changed. The Obama administration has openly carried out more than six times the drone attacks approved by the Bush White House; and the main reason most Americans are unaware is the media looks the other way.

Obama made closing the Guantanamo Bay prison a campaign issue and has been unable to follow up on his promise. Instead, he now seems to favor a policy of killing to avoid prisoner detention. With few exceptions, the media has apparently been fine with openly using drones – that have killed many innocent bystanders – when they feverishly protested the use of enhanced interrogation techniques under Bush. They and Obama considered waterboarding prisoners to be ‘torture’; but they justify this policy of bombing suspects with no judicial review or trial.

The drone controversy has been brewing for months now. Judge Andrew Napolitano recently emphasized that the government’s legal memos on Obama’s policy to kill people overseas includes American citizens. Memos were released after a year of stonewalling federal judges who were seeking legal justification on drone use. What is this administration’s legal basis for claiming the right to kill without due process, thus suspending guaranteed constitutional protections?

The undated and unsigned 16-page document leaked to NBC refers to itself as a Department of Justice white paper. Its logic is flawed, its premises are bereft of any appreciation for the values of the Declaration of Independence and the supremacy of the Constitution, and its rationale could be used to justify any breaking of any law by any “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government.”

Under the Constitution, the president can only order killing using the military when the United States has been attacked, or when an attack is imminent. Obama and his advisers have used the word “surgical” to defend the use of drones as humane and necessary; but the fact is that out of the 2,300 drone-caused deaths, approximately 14 percent have been innocent civilians.

Such gravitas caused PBS’s Bill Moyers to question those who gave Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, implying it has become tarnished. Moyers now feels the president is indifferent to collateral damage and even called Obama’s drone use “cold-blooded.”

Ultra-liberal Columbia University professor Marc Lamont Hill even admitted the media refuses to hold Obama accountable, saying “I think the problem is we [Democrats] have convinced ourselves that Obama’s drones are somehow softer and kinder and gentler than Bush’s drones.”

Eric Holder’s Justice Department provided justification for killing the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, born in New Mexico, in an American drone strike in September 2011. Note that Obama and Holder had the audacity to denounce the legal method of interrogating terrorists by waterboarding, decrying former VP Dick Cheney’s defense of the policy. The double standards are astounding.

For once, I give the ACLU credit for calling the new memo a disturbing document, saying it’s a “stunning overreach of executive authority.” In his confirmation hearing for the CIA, John Brennan defended Obama’s counterterrorism program; and despite evidence, he stated that drone attacks are carried out “as a last resort, to save lives when there is no other alternative.”

Where is the line drawn? It should alarm us that our government also has the authority to use drones against its own people. During the Obama administration, conservatives, Tea Party participants, and even our veterans can be scrutinized by as dangerous or suspicious.

Referring to a 2012 DHS report, retired Army lieutenant colonel Robert Maginnis writes:

Is this a slippery slope whereby the government might turn drone technology on Americans at home it labels “terrorists”? That’s an alarming thought, but so are past statements made by this government… [The 2012 report advocates] warning police to be suspicious of anyone that feels their way of life is endangered, anyone that is religious, and anyone that might be interested in “personal liberty” and/or firearms.

The domestic drone market is now expected to grow quickly. Congress must debate this controversial policy and set clear boundaries before it gets out of hand. I’m all for defending America, but not at the expense of increased government power and authority over the very citizens they’ve pledged to protect and serve.

Evangelist Ray Comfort produced a documentary (180 movie) in which he gets people thinking about ethical dilemmas involving life. Comfort asks: “It’s 1939, you have a high-powered rifle, and you have Hitler in your sights. Would you pull the trigger?” After most respond “yes,” he then asks: “If it was 30 years earlier, would you have killed Hitler’s pregnant mother knowing what you know now?”

If drone killing isn’t controversial enough for the media to report on, either they don’t value all life – including life in the womb – or they prioritize protecting the president they voted for over telling American citizens the truth. Maybe it’s both.

*To catch up on the first three articles in this media malpractice series, click here.

Photo credit: axeman3d (Creative Commons)

Filed Under: Floyd Reports Tagged With: Andrew Napolitano, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, George W Bush, Guantanamo Bay, Justice Department, Media Bias, Tea Party

After Credit Downgrade, the Tea Party Must Dump Obama

August 10, 2011 By Ben 3 Comments

Michael Reagan, FloydReports.com

President Obama, the Democratic Party and its members of Congress have spent years blaming former President George W. Bush for the nation’s current economic woes, which is akin to blaming the bank’s tellers for a bank robbery, or for the dishonesty of their bosses, the bank’s executives who were looting the till.

Nobody in the liberal-dominated media bothers to note that in the last years of the Bush presidency Democrats controlled the Congress and thus had a death grip on the nation’s economy, having complete control over the nation’s purse strings. They spent (and spent, and spent) the yet-uncollected taxes of future generations — as well as our own — as if there were no tomorrow.

It wasn’t a Bush Congress that jammed the incredible costs of ObamaCare down the throats of the American people and their children and grandchildren — it was our spendthrift president and his allies on Capitol Hill doing their classic imitation of the legendary drunken sailors on shore leave.

It’s simply common sense to understand that spending money one doesn’t have in the hopes that the future will provide the needed funds is something like believing that some beneficent tooth fairy will come up with the money in the future.

Now the president and the national Democratic Party have suddenly discovered a scapegoat for the latest economic mess they have thrust upon the American people. They insist that the credit-rating downgrade was the fault of the Tea Party trying to control the nation’s purse strings. I’m not kidding. They really expect us to swallow this whopper as the Gospel truth.

They expect us to ignore the fact that the millions of Tea Party members are simply Americans, deeply and sincerely concerned about the nation’s economy and the tendency of the government to spend their hard-earned tax money on whatever scam strikes its fancy.

It’s time to place the blame for our economic malaise where it belongs — on the shoulders of the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress.

Tea Party members have been the voice of reason, not the wild-eyed terrorists portrayed by the Left’s crazy spin doctors.

What would have averted the credit-rating downgrade and the subsequent turmoil in the markets? Precisely the spending cuts advocated by the Tea Party.

According to a statement by Jenny Beth Martin, a co-founder and national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, the debt-ceiling compromise was….

Tim Pawlenty: We Need More, Bigger Unconstitutional Wars!

June 30, 2011 By Ben 23 Comments

Ben Johnson, The White House Watch

In election years, candidates inevitably promise voters they will do more than their opponents. In practice that usually means increased debt-spending and expanding unconstitutional encroachments on liberty. Now one Republican presidential candidate has doubled-down on the most blatantly illegal action of this presidency, saying Barack Obama has not gone far enough in waging war-by-decree in Libya — and those who want to follow the Constitution are bead-wearing hippies bent on dragging America down in disgrace.

On Tuesday, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty gave what he dubbed a “major” foreign policy speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. In it, Pawlenty pouted, “parts of the Republican Party now seem to be trying to out-bid the Democrats in appealing to isolationist sentiments.”

“America already has one political party devoted to decline, retrenchment, and withdrawal,” he said. “It does not need a second one.”

He fleshed out what he meant in the speech — calling on Obama to “commit America’s strength to removing Ghadafi” and recognize the rebels as Libya’s legitimate government. During a question-and-answer session afterward, TPaw agreed with President Obama that the War Powers Resolution “does not apply” to the war in Libya.

In March, Pawlenty told students at Vanderbilt University that getting Congressional authorization for a war, as required by the Constitution and the resolution, is “a very complex matter and it’s not something that lends itself to an easy answer.” He added, “we need to make sure we don’t tie the executive or the commander in chief’s hands so tightly that he or she can’t respond in an emergency quickly or in a situation that deserves and needs a quick response.” Pawlenty told the CFR on Tuesday he would consult with Congress “as a courtesy and gesture of respect.”

His speech and his attack on his fellow Republicans raises (at least) 15 questions this author would like to ask Gov. Pawlenty:

You have stated the War Powers Resolution does not apply to the war in Libya. However, the administration’s best lawyers disagreed with your assessment. Attorney General Eric Holder reportedly sided with them. The highest legal scholar in the administration to hold to your view is Harold Koh, who advocates “transnationalist jurisprudence,” who once branded the United States a member of the “axis of disobedience,” and who often co-authors articles with members of the Center for Constitutional Rights — a pro-terrorist legal house founded by Marxists. How can a self-identified “conservative” find himself to the Left of Eric Holder? If elected, will you rely on the advice of Koh or others of his ideology?
The Founding Fathers clearly placed the war-making power in the hands of Congress alone — in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution as well as their deliberations before its passage and their practice following its adoption. Since the Constitution has not been amended, what legal precedent do you believe suspended and nullified the Founders’ intentions?
Since you do not believe Congressional authorization is necessary to initiate hostilities, at what point, if any, would you consider Congressional authorization necessary to continue military interventions abroad in which American personnel or weapons were killing or attempting to kill foreign nationals (referred to as “hostilities” in the War Powers Resolution)?

Admission: The Left Won’t Back Impeachment Because Obama’s Black

June 28, 2011 By Ben 20 Comments

Philip C. Restino Jr., OpEdNews

Twenty years ago after U.S. forces had driven the Iraqi military out of Kuwait and back into Iraq, President George H.W. Bush as Commander in Chief ordered the U.S. military to cease-fire on February 28, 1991. Years later, in his 1998 memoir “A World Transformed,” Bush admitted that the reason he chose to order the cease-fire was because he understood that advancing further into Iraq, a country that had not attacked the U.S., and overthrowing its government could easily be seen as an illegal war of aggression and thus warrant a call from the American people for his removal from office by the Constitutional remedy of impeachment. It was the fear of a call for impeachment by the American people that in effect stopped the President from continuing the war.

Since the Presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton during the 1990′s, which immediately followed the Presidency of Republican George H.W. Bush, the American people have allowed a practice of the President acting as a “unitary executive” unaccountable to the rule of law in ordering the U.S. military into unprovoked, illegal wars of aggression and occupation.

During the Presidency of Republican George W. Bush, attempts were made to even re-define the office of the Presidency as a “unitary executive” with literally dictatorial powers beyond the rule of law. Now, because the American people have still not spoken up, the current Presidency of Democrat Barack Obama has allowed the President of the United States to order young Americans to war without consulting the American people’s representatives in Congress or even having to concoct a lie about the U.S. facing a “justifiable” threat to its national security.

President Obama’s ordering of the March 19, 2011, attack on Libya, without even consulting Congress, let alone getting a Declaration of War or other type of Congressional approval for the attack, has led to a good amount of discussion as to how the President could very well be impeached for having unilaterally ordered such an attack. People from both ends of the political spectrum, to include members of Congress, have been quite clear in publicly stating that the President’s attack on Libya is not only an impeachable offense, as per Democrat Representative and 2008 Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich from Ohio, but it also makes him accountable for war crimes, as per Republican Representative and 2012 Presidential candidate Ron Paul from Texas.

Notable legal experts and scholars from both the left and the right, including former Democrat U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, former Republican Deputy U.S. Attorney General Bruce Fein, and Professor of Law Francis Boyle, have publicly offered their services to assist in carrying out impeachment proceedings against President Obama over his unconstitutional and otherwise illegal war on Libya to any member of Congress willing to step forward and introduce Articles of Impeachment.

Let us not forget that it was the former Constitutional Law Professor and U.S. Senator Barack H. Obama who said himself during a December 20, 2007, interview with the Boston Globe that “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

The sovereign nation of Libya posed no such threat whatsoever to the United States, and Obama’s ordering of more than 120 Cruise Missiles fired into Libya on just the first day of his own March 19 “Shock and Awe” is nothing less than another outright illegal U.S. war of aggression similar to the illegal U.S. war of aggression on Iraq launched eight years to the day prior — minus the land invasion — which is the next step in the process if the American people don’t draw the line and call for a stop to it now.

With such a clear-cut case for impeaching President Obama over his war on Libya, along with the legal experts and political figures ready to proceed with a call for impeachment, why has there not been a call from leaders of the national antiwar organizations for impeaching Obama? It is obvious that making such a call now could actually prevent him from going ahead with a land invasion into Libya, and even be enough of a threat to force him to finally end the 10-year U.S. wars and occupations by using his unique ability as Commander in Chief to order a cease-fire.

People involved in national antiwar organizations have told me that the issue of racism is a major factor in their failure to call for impeachment of President Obama for what amounts to the same crimes cited in their former calls for impeachment and present calls for prosecution of President George W. Bush over his war on Iraq. If calling for the impeachment of the first Black American U.S. President for prosecuting illegal wars of aggression is racist, then that first needs to be squared with all the brown-skinned people being killed under his command….

Golfing While the Constitution Burns

June 21, 2011 By Ben 42 Comments

Ben Johnson, The White House Watch

When Barack Obama and John Boehner played golf this weekend, they played on the same team. How appropriate.

Barack Obama has violated the Constitution’s war-making power – reserved by Article I, Section 8, to Congress – from the moment he sent American troops into harm’s way without Congressional approval. He has been violating the War Powers Resolution since at least the 60^th day of that campaign. And he has violated the most liberal reading of that act – the one Boehner has adopted as his own – since this weekend. Yet despite the letter Boehner authored last week, which the media presented as an “ultimatum,” Obama has neither obtained Congressional authorization nor removed our troops. Boehner’s letter weakly supplicated “I sincerely hope the Administration will faithfully comply with the War Powers Resolution,” but at least it seemed to set this weekend as a definitive cut-off point.

The “deadline” has come and gone, and Obama has not answered the most burning questions of the mission’s legality to anyone’s satisfaction. Instead, the president has thumbed his nose at Congress in general, Boehner in particular, and the American people at large, and the Speaker-cum-caddy has made no meaningful response whatsoever.

Obama insists the American role in Libya is too diminutive to constitute “hostilities,” so his action is perfectly legal. White House spokesman Jay Carney repeated his boss’s party line at Monday’s press conference, stating, “the War Powers Resolution does not need to be involved because the ‘hostilities’ clause of that resolution is not met.” However, soldiers in Libya are receiving an additional $25 a month in “imminent danger pay.” American drones still rain missiles down upon military targets. NATO is alternately bombing Muammar Qaddafi’s home and killing the innocent Libyan civilians they are purportedly protecting. (We had to kill the civilians in order to save them?) NATO admitted (at least) one of its bombs went off target on Sunday, killing nine civilians in Tripoli, while allied bombs allegedly killed 15 civilians in Sorman on Monday.

Not to worry, though; Defense Secretary Robert Gates said over the weekend, in a confidence-builder worthy of Churchill, “I think this is going to end OK.” Gates, who once opposed the Libyan adventure, has pulled a 180 on the matter.

Even Obama’s short-term fellow Illinois Senator, Dick Durbin, agrees Libya more than rises to the level of hostilities.

So, too, we have learned, do the best legal minds of Obama’s administration (not a coveted nor much-contested title, I assure you). In overruling his own lawyers, Obama rejected the considered conclusions of Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon’s general counsel, and Caroline Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). The New York Times reported it is “extraordinarily rare” for any president to overrule the OLC. “Under normal circumstances, the office’s interpretation of the law is legally binding on the executive branch.”

But then, nothing in the Obama administration transpires under “normal circumstances.”

Two former OLC lawyers outlined precisely how unusual the dismissal was….

The Audacity Of Drones: Keeping Americans Uninformed (Part 4)

After Credit Downgrade, the Tea Party Must Dump Obama

Tim Pawlenty: We Need More, Bigger Unconstitutional Wars!

Admission: The Left Won’t Back Impeachment Because Obama’s Black

Golfing While the Constitution Burns

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