Rand Paul Starts New Drone War In Congress

SonicSpike (242293) writes with news that the ACLU and Rand Paul both think every Senator should read David Barron's legal memos justifying the use of drones against an American citizen before he is confirmed to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals. From the article: "Paul, the junior Republican senator from Kentucky, has informed Reid he will object to David Barron's nomination to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals unless the Justice Department makes public the memos he authored justifying the killing of an American citizen in Yemen. The American Civil Liberties Union supports Paul's objection, giving some Democratic lawmakers extra incentive to support a delay to Barron's nomination, which could come to the floor in the next two weeks. Barron, formerly a lawyer in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, penned at least one secret legal memo approving the Sept. 2011 drone strike that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric whom intelligence officials accused of planning terrorist attacks against the United States."

Re:citizenship is irrelevant

[NettiWelho]

typically inside sovereign nations not at war with the US In the case of Yemen, it's with the permission, and sometimes the assistance, of the host government, which doesn't control that area where the drones are used. In Pakistan there appears to be at least tacit permission. In Afghanistan, well, there's a war on.

In all cases, the law in the US (AUMF and others) allows it.

Claiming lawful action under German or puppet regime law didn't help the nazis, they got hung anyway. The US set the precedent on this one pretty solid.

Re:His concern is touching

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not legally people, like slaves in America prior to the emancipation proclamation. Democrats love to kill people (especially black people), so they put up a legal fiction that humans 1 second from crawling out of a womb are not people. Not outside yet? You're a tissue growth and we can use poisons, knives and vacuum cleaners to kill you. And if you survive the attempt and are born? We can still kill you because we're democrats and we like killing things.

Re:citizenship is irrelevant

[Sique]

Actually, it's spelled with a K. A cyrillic K. No matter if ukrainian or russian. Or it is spelled with a Q, if you like the crimean tatar writing of Qirim (the actual spelling has the i without dots, but Slashdot doesn't use UTF).

Re:citizenship is irrelevant

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

This is a pretty reliable method of creating new terrorists.

Don't know if you're an ignorant American or an EU pacifist, but we tried doing nothing before (see Jimmy Carter presidency). Didn't work so well. In fact it made the terrorists even more emboldened because they knew that nobody would ever come to get them. At least this way people know that they may have to pay for fighting America.