Pssh, it's just one little murder...

Via Radley Balko, today:

There are no mitigating factors, here. Obama is arguing the executive has the power to execute American citizens without a trial, without even so much as an airing of the charges against them, and that it can do so in complete secrecy, with no oversight from any court, and that the families of the executed have no legal recourse.

...

So yeah. Tyranny. If there’s more tyrannical power a president could possibly claim than the power to execute the citizens of his country at his sole discretion, with no oversight, no due process, and no ability for anyone to question the execution even after the fact . . . I can’t think of it.

Good information to have at your fingertips, the next time you're treated to the sanctimonious catechism that any comparison of modern America to 1930s Germany is, on its face, dismissible extremism, and in fact constitutes prima facie evidence of some race-based personal vendetta against the Current Occupant. Because gosh, it just couldn't be anything else, now could it? These are swell guys here!

(Get it, you self-righteous brainiacs? If you've ever wondered just how the Germans came to tolerate genocide, wonder no more. It happens just like this. Exactly like this. And by that I do not just mean the state's claim on every one of our lives--hell, that's been the wet dream of tyrants since the beginning of time--I also mean the public apologias, the rationalizations, the message that gets sent back to the tyrants as feedback that "you're doin' great, guys, go kick us some more heretic ass!" This accepting response will be duly noted, and acted upon with vigor, by whoever the current tyrant may be. You can mark that well.)

We're already "there". Just look around! At this point it's only a matter of degree, and of semantics.


It should be noted that it's only the lawsuit (and its response) that is new here. Chris Floyd over at Empire Burlesque has been writing about the issue for a good while now (I even saw fit to channel his thoughts for an Examiner article back in April), and chances are pretty good he'll get around to this development before long.

Seriously funny.

From the New York Times, dutifully informing us that our betters need even more, ever more, always more from us. It seems that dang Internet just isn't easily wiretappable, and so what we need is a new mandate to force it to be so.

But law enforcement officials contend that imposing such a mandate is reasonable and necessary to prevent the erosion of their investigative powers.

"erosion of their investigative powers". Now that is the funniest thing I've heard in quite a long time.


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Hat tip to the redoubtable Claire Wolfe.