White House Press Secretary Jay Carney On Targeted Killing: Lethal Strikes On U.S. Citizens ‘Legal,’ ‘Ethical,’ And ‘Wise’

Words fail (h/t):

A friendly reminder from TAFKAdnA:

The Obama administration claims that the secret judgment of a single “well-informed high level administration official” meets the demands of due process and is sufficient justification to kill an American citizen suspected of working with terrorists. That procedure is entirely secret. Thus it’s impossible to know which rules the administration has established to protect due process and to determine how closely those rules are followed. The government needs the approval of a judge to detain a suspected terrorist. To kill one, it need only give itself permission.

“Trust me” != due process, Mr. POTUS.

Related: Thomas P.M. Barnett:

For now, the only club whose membership can earn you such a “pre-sentence” is al-Qaeda, but how many dangerous organizations (you tell me where to put the sarcastic quotation marks on that phrase) will be added to this list in the years and decades ahead?

[…]

This is an extremely dangerous rule-set for America to be exporting around the world: threaten or scare of just plain piss off the wrong great-power government, and it reserves the right to assassinate you at will.  The quid pro quos are easy to imagine:  you, China, turn your back when we need to kill ours and . . . America can probably do the same when you take out those “protestors” (I mean, terrorists!).

I just have to ask: how does Obama lecture Netanyahu about anything at this point?

Around the Internets

Hump Day Tuesday (oops) mega-link blowout:

How Idle No More Could Help Save Canadian Democracy

Mounties snooped on Occupy protesters in nation’s capital: documents

Police drones raise fears over personal privacy

Anticipating domestic boom, colleges rev up drone piloting programs (h/t)

U.S. Memo Details Views on Killing Citizens in Al Qaeda

Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans

Human Rights First Calls Legal Justification for Targeted Killing Flawed

Noam Chomsky, Why It’s “Legal” When the U.S. Does It

CIA rendition: more than a quarter of countries ‘offered covert support’

Extraordinary Rendition And The Axis Of Evil, How ‘Enemy’ Nations Iran, Syria, Libya Cooperated With CIA

The Vertical Axis in U.S. Foreign Policy

Tehranimal Farm

Welfare fraud is a drop in the ocean compared to tax avoidance

Jonathan Kay Still Ignoring Women

Why Aaron died

Skeeters Bit by the Image of a President Who Opposes Violence—Not the Second Amendment

Nothing New Under the Wingnut Sun: ‘Survivalism’

Can watching a couple of Rihanna videos really turn a girl into a knicker-dropping strumpet?

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Reviews ‘Girls,’ Calls Donald Glover Role ‘Some Jungle Fever Lover”

The Least Happy Jamaican: On Volkswagen’s Super Bowl Commercial

Could New Orleans Be the Labor Movement’s Next Frontier?

China’s People Problem

New Gas Extraction Methods Alter Global Balance of Power

The Legacy of Chattel Slavery: Private Prisons Blur the Line Between Real People and Real Estate With New IRS Property Gambit

The State of Anti-Austerity Struggles in Greece

First African Female Billionaire a Testament in Corruption Not Success

Exit music:

Something In The Water

BCL on the chutzpah of Jonathan Kay, junk science enabler debunker:

[T]here’s a real lack of self-awareness here.  Jonathon [sic], after all,  is comment pages editor at the National Post, and under his watch it has for years entertained  junk science from Global Warming deniers.  Sometimes this nonsense has been confined to the OpEd pages; sometimes its made the news, and sometimes the claims have been so egregiously false that defamation suits have been the result.

And as I have written on several occasions, you can’t open the floodgates a little way.  You can’t set teh crazy just a little bit free. When you start smearing a particular scientific field, you get mud over the whole edifice.

SHOCKING: Republican Voter Suppression Efforts Suppress Democratic Votes

The NY Times:

Several recent polls and studies suggest that long waiting times in some places depressed turnout in 2012 and that lines were longest in cities, where Democrats outnumber Republicans. In a New York Times/CBS News poll taken shortly after Election Day, 18 percent of Democrats said they waited at least a half-hour to vote, compared with 11 percent of independents and 9 percent of Republicans.

Wait — it gets better:

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysis determined that blacks and Hispanics waited nearly twice as long in line to vote on average than whites. Florida had the nation’s longest lines, at 45 minutes, followed by the District of Columbia, Maryland, South Carolina and Virginia, according to Charles Stewart III, the political science professor who conducted the analysis.

A separate analysis, by an Ohio State University professor and The Orlando Sentinel, concluded that more than 200,000 voters in Florida “gave up in frustration” without voting.

“When I got there, the line was around the building,” said Jonathan Piccolo, 33, who said he had waited nearly eight hours to cast a ballot in Miami-Dade County the Monday before Election Day.

“It’s one of the most sacred rights you have,” Mr. Piccolo added. “They should make it as painless as possible.”

Features, not bugs, kids. Democracy is apparently a major impediment to Real America.

Update: A reminder from comments that voter suppression tactics are a burgeoning export market for Uncle Sam.

Ron Paul on Murdered SEAL Chris Kyle: “He Who Lives By The Sword…”

You’re all class, Doc:

Chris Kyle's death seems to confirm that "he who lives by the sword dies by the sword." Treating PTSD at a firing range doesn't make sense

— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) February 4, 2013

Ok, so maybe the 140 is not exactly conducive to nuance.

Onward Facebook ho:

As a veteran, I certainly recognize that this weekend’s violence and killing of Chris Kyle were a tragic and sad event. My condolences and prayers go out to Mr. Kyle’s family. Unconstitutional and unnecessary wars have endless unintended consequences. A policy of non-violence, as Christ preached, would have prevented this and similar tragedies.

Yes, clearly the problem was not enough fortified Jesus in Kyle’s spiritual diet. Look, I’m not big on treating PTSD with MORE GUNZ either. However, this trademark reflexive knee-jerkism is the sort of tone-deaf hobby-horse humping that makes DOCTOR Paul’s preening moral vanity so bloody odious to those of us who haven’t wholly sacrificed critical thinking to the glibertarian Borg.

Check out Rand-boy’s desperate pre-2016 damage control effort here. Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall at the next family dinner?

(h/t)