Harlem, Here's Your Obama Snuff Movie

Here is your Obama snuff movie, Harlem dudes, but watch out.  You may star in the next show.
Obama and the police-state regime he nominally heads may prove to be the ultimate victims of the drone that killed a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, in Yemen.



Dissenting Democrat, a website whose masthead proclaims 'Advocating for Democracy, Not the Democrats—NObama 2012,' issued a release two days ago with the above headline.



The succinct piece states, in full:



"Recently an American-born alleged spokesman for Al Qaeda was killed by a U.S. drone missile.



"This killing without due process of law: no arrest, no evidence, no filed charges, and no trial, was authorized by an executive order of President Obama.



"The recently deceased was selected by a secret court attached to the National Security Council. The proceedings of this court are secret. The membership of this court is secret. The evidence considered by this court is secret.



"The secret court was established by an executive order of President Obama.



"The authority of the President to set up secret courts and to kill selected American citizens was established by an executive order of the President.



"No President in the history of the United States has ever held that he could kill an American citizen without due process of law. There is nothing in the Constitution delegating the President the power to kill American citizens or to establish secret courts. Indeed, a reading of the Constitution based on plain-language and original intent interpretations indicates that such practices are not constitutional.



"The White House announced that it has an opinion from the Justice Department which found that the President did have the power to establish secret courts and kill Americans. This opinion, however, is secret and will not be released to the public. Not only is the opinion a secret but the legal precedents and court opinions, if any, which were relied upon in this opinion are also secret."



Another attack on the killing of al-Awlaki, in the right-wing American Thinker, by Jonathan Kinlay (on faculty at New York University Stern School of Business, also Carnegie-Mellon)—"The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution is unequivocal: no American shall 'be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.' No amount of ducking and diving will evade the inescapable fact that, for the first time, U.S. military officials in an aggressive overreach of constitutional authority deliberately targeted an American citizen for killing. And no amount of legalistic wordplay will alter the reality that al-Awlaki was denied due process. (No, Mr. Gingrich, the signing of a death warrant by an American President does not constitute 'due process,' except perhaps in North Korea or Iran."



And under the headline, "Dangerous Precedent," Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul released another statement today denouncing the assassination of two American citizens, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, as "an outrage and a criminal act carried out by the President and his administration. If the law protecting us against government-sanctioned assassination can be voided when there is a really bad American, is there any meaning left to the rule of law in the United States? If, as we learned last week, a secret government committee, not subject to congressional oversight or judicial review, can now target certain Americans for assassination, under what moral authority do we presume to lecture the rest of the world about protecting human rights? ... Our outrage against even the obviously guilty is not worth the sacrifice of the rule of law. Al-Awlaki has been outspoken against the United States and we are told he encouraged violence against Americans. We do not know that he actually committed any acts of violence. Ironically, he was once invited to the Pentagon as part of an outreach to moderate Muslims after 9/11. As the U.S. attacks against Muslims in the Middle East and Central Asia expanded, it is said that he became more fervent and radical in his opposition to U.S. foreign policy."