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Put Awlaki in a convoy driving down the Mason-Dixon line and you have a point.
Not much of one because, if he's driving down the Mason-Dixon line on his way to commit a terrorist act, I say he still dies.
I agree. But thinking that we've turned the page to some horrific new era in the history of civil rights abuses is ignorant and uninformed.
Put Awlaki in a convoy driving down the Mason-Dixon line and you have a point.
Not much of one because, if he's driving down the Mason-Dixon line on his way to commit a terrorist act, I say he still dies.
There's a clear distinction to me between an enemy combatant and an American. You can't have it both ways. You can't be out to destroy us and be one of us at the same time. If he wanted to have his rights read to him, he shouldn't have switched sides.
Maybe we have, maybe we haven't. We sure did set the table, though. Torture, indefinite detention and assassination of Americans on the president's say so can no longer be ruled out. That's a fairly drastic change from ten years ago.
Plus ça change . . .
Actually, it's not; those things have been done since our founding. What happened 10 years ago is an administration tried to do the right thing and legitimize them by drawing up legal guidelines for the use of enhanced interrogation techniques without committing torture and authorize indefinite detention of dangerous combatants that could neither be tried nor released (in the past -- as recent as the Vietnam war, such detainees would have been summarily executed in the field).
On the matter of assassinating American citizens abroad, I think it's a rather new phenomenon to have Americans openly consorting with an enemy actively engaged in trying to kill Americans. Killing them is the most expedient means to interrupting their benefits to the enemy.
Vy, I'm surprised you didn't know that history about Lincoln. It's easily the biggest stain on his Presidency.
..the more things stay the same?Plus ça change . . .
I can see what you mean, and in the pla udinous sense can even agree. But if what you mean is that 1st and 4th Amendment protections haven't been significantly undermined in the last ten years, you're full of it.
I knew about the suspension of HC - we went over that in school - I must've tuned out the stuff about Taney.
I wouldn't speak in generalities like the entire 1st/4th amendments have been eroded. There have been some erosions, sure. But the court has also strengthened some of these amendment's protections. But I don't wanna get into a debate about this stuff.
From a legal history perspective - this is kind of an ebb/flow phenomena. Historically progressive eras (legal eras) are followed by conservative eras. The Burger Court followed the Warren Court.
Thats the biggest problem with the Supreme Court... It has no teeth to encore rulings that go contra to the Presidents wishes. , Andrew Jackson pretty much spit on the SCOTUS decision re: Native Americans.
I'm sure Lincoln recognized that.
That's what I said. Thanks for stressing my point.There have been some erosions, sure.
I wasn't stressing anything.
ok
So you're saying you trust the government to declare who is an 'enemy combatant', even after they've admittedly screwed up the classification about 66% of the time, without any kind of oversight? I disagree.
You know, this guy was probably guilty as , there's no debating that. But if you don't keep the form and oversight, you end up with a system ripe for abuse. And that's what's being pointed out. Unilateral secretive unchecked death penalties are symptomatic of banana republics, ruthless dictators and a complete disregard of a lot of cons utional pillars this country was built upon (some of which we already discussed, such as due process, checks and balances, separation of powers, etc).
Not really. And if you're going to argue that, you're expected to at least go into the kind of details vy went during the Lincoln presidency (which IMO does not equate to an 'invasion' as he believes).
If AS disagrees with you, he must be.
Why not?
Because it's useless to debate a certainty?
In the current climate, I have little doubt that a court would've found him guilty of treason, and that the verdict would've been death. Just my opinion though. I do think that court decision should've happened before his death though.
But you're right in that it's debatable.
...
There's no opera box in this forum. If pointing out the juvenile way you insult other posters over mere differences of opinion makes me somehow akin to Stadler and Waldorf, I'll accept the comparison gladly.
You calling someone juvenile is laughable.
Eh, laugh it up.
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