Rand Paul's Filibuster is Live on CSPAN2.

[Vandy Vol]

Most importantly, it worked...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/07/historic-filibuster-renews-bipartisan-focus-on-drones-regulation/

How so?  It was my understanding that this is what the DoJ had originally said in its memo in regard to the whole "noncombatant" issue, and that Holder was merely generally referencing the DoJ's justification when he vaguely stated that a drone strike could only occur on an American citizen in "extraordinary circumstances."

I don't see any change of stance.  Granted, Holder should have clarified this a lot earlier, but I would assume that these politicians who have been rabble-rousing about this whole issue had access to the DoJ memo.

It was a stupid move by Holder to not plainly explain this when asked, but it was also stupid of Rand to ask a question that (again, according to my understanding) was already answered by the DoJ.  I don't see why Holder verbally telling him in writing that American citizens who are noncombatants would not be attacked by drones is any different of a response than what the DoJ stated in writing.

Am I missing something here?

[Townhallsavoy]

How so?  It was my understanding that this is what the DoJ had originally said in its memo in regard to the whole "noncombatant" issue, and that Holder was merely generally referencing the DoJ's justification when he vaguely stated that a drone strike could only occur on an American citizen in "extraordinary circumstances."

I don't see any change of stance.  Granted, Holder should have clarified this a lot earlier, but I would assume that these politicians who have been rabble-rousing about this whole issue had access to the DoJ memo.

It was a stupid move by Holder to not plainly explain this when asked, but it was also stupid of Rand to ask a question that (again, according to my understanding) was already answered by the DoJ.  I don't see why Holder verbally telling him in writing that American citizens who are noncombatants would not be attacked by drones is any different of a response than what the DoJ stated in writing.

Am I missing something here?

You admit Holder didn't clarify anything when asked.  That was bad enough and many people do not trust this administration, so Paul was making sure he got that clarification. 

Honestly, I think Paul was trying to convey his displeasure with the current government overstepping its bounds and bring it to America's attention.  I think he was successful. 

[bottomfeeder]

Fuck John McCain up his ass with a rough cut 6X6 while being gagged with a copy of the US Constitution. What a piece of shit. He's no war hero, he's ex-POW. That tells me all I need to know.

[dallaswareagle]

Fuck John McCain up his ass with a rough cut 6X6 while being gagged with a copy of the US Constitution. What a piece of shit. He's no war hero, he's ex-POW. That tells me all I need to know.

I was in   2/187  Hoorah. But fuck we were gone all the time.

[GH2001]

Newt agrees with Rand Paul - and one of the reasons I always respect his opinion.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/newt-gingrich-i-am-disappointed-and-saddened-by-john-mccain-lecturing-the-next-generation/

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich tore into Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Friday in a wide-ranging interview with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. Gingrich said he was “disappointed” by McCain’s decision to “lecture” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and those senators who joined him in his Wednesday filibuster. “I don’t know what’s happened to John McCain, but I find this very sad,” Gingrich said.

RELATED: Rand Paul: ‘I Treat Sen. McCain With Respect. I Don’t Think I Always Get The Same In Return’

“So, who are you with?” Blitzer asked Gingrich pointedly regarding the feud between the Senate GOP’s younger and older members over the Obama administration’s drone warfare program. “The McCains or the Rand Pauls?”

“Well, I’m really disappointed in John McCain, and I’m very saddened by it,” Gingrich replied. “McCain, in his younger years, was a great maverick. He took on his party all the time.”

The idea that he’s now lecturing the next generation because they have the guts to stand up, which is I — I would have thought John McCain we do have applauded them and he would have said, I may not agree with you in detail, but I’m proud of the fact that you’re standing up for your beliefs, you’re fighting.

Gingrich added that Paul was correct to question the Department of Justice’s presumed legal authority to execute and American citizen on U.S. soil without due process via a drone strike.

“I mean, if our Constitution means anything, it means that your government can’t capriciously kill you without the rule of law,” Gingrich asserted. “And it was very clear from the attorney general’s earlier letters that they were reserving the right — remember, we’re not talking about a combatant engaged in fighting against the US. The minute you do that, you lose all your rights.”

[AUTiger1]

Wonder if this could be a reason why McCain ajd Graham are on the attack?

http://www.ijreview.com/2013/03/40498-filibusted-obamas-outreach-supper-with-graham-mccain-leads-to-600-billion-tax-hike-proposal/

On mobile or would copy pasta.

[bottomfeeder]

Wonder if this could be a reason why McCain ajd Graham are on the attack?

http://www.ijreview.com/2013/03/40498-filibusted-obamas-outreach-supper-with-graham-mccain-leads-to-600-billion-tax-hike-proposal/

On mobile or would copy pasta.

$600 billion is a lot coming from a fragile private sector. I would love to read the details of this plan and see just how far it gets through the house or nonrepresentatives. Nobody fucking cares anymore. I mean the banks have robbed many people of the life-savings and are now going for the throat in an attempt to take control over the entire economy. Throw out everything we were taught in economics class because these actions would be nothing short of authoritarian. Any and all tax increases would kill all economic growth. I watched Pimco's president last night declare a 3% growth in the economy starting second quarter. First quarter is 1.5%. It seems as if any and all production and growth of the private sector is to be consumed by the public sector. Why the fuck don't we just declare ourselves to be communists if that's the case?

The price of Senators McCain and Graham attending an ‘outreach dinner‘ with the president may wind up costing taxpayers $600 billion more in taxes. And you thought the only price paid would be to their image.

While Rand Paul was working the Senate chamber in a 13 hour-long filibuster to ensure the American homeland would not be treated like a permanent battlefield, the two GOP Senators were noshing on some mega-caloric meal with President Obama. Bad optics isn’t just the vision you get when you spend as much time in government as these two senators.

As the Daily Caller reported about the dinner table agenda:

    White House officials tell reporters they hope to make progress in Congress by splitting a few swing-voting GOP Senators away from the GOP Senate caucus, which is led by Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell.

    A top goal for the president is to replace half of the automatic 10-year, $1.2 trillion spending cuts known as sequestration with a plan that would include tax increases. Obama also wants to pass immigration reform, which is being pushed by Graham and McCain.

The president’s tax hike deal would essentially cut the effect of the sequester in half by dulling the need for the government to cut back spending. The $600 billion in tax increases would come at the expense of the private economy, which is struggling to create enough jobs to improve the unemployment rate and boost labor force participation.

Roll Call had reported that the dinner appears to have been spurred on by Graham and McCain. The two Senators attended the dinner and then blasted Senator Rand Paul by calling his filibuster a ‘disservice’ to the conversation about the president’s legal use of drones and even ‘ridiculous.’

Speaking of ridiculous, the GOP thought that after having the fiscal cliff settled by a deal that hammered most workers with payroll tax increases, and led to zero serious spending cuts, that the idea of tax increases would be taken off the table. The Republicans had compromised on tax increases and then could get serious about spending cuts, or so the quixotic line of thinking went. The next day, the Democrats were already talking about $1 trillion more in tax increases.

Well, no sooner did the March 1st deadline arrive for the sequester, a process of $85 billion in budget cuts that was the president’s idea, but nonetheless was initially blamed on Republicans, than we had an ‘apocalypse‘ so dire that the administration had to suspend tours of the White House because of a measly $20,000. Not that this would stop a fine, upstanding outfit like Politico from hyping a ‘hopeful tone‘ and a ‘grand bargain’ (for the American taxpayer?) due to this piddling, unserious dinner that all our economic problems will soon be magically whisked away by Washington power-brokers.

So, that’s the budgetary ‘reach out’ for these two Senators courtesy of the president, who has been widely seen as wanting to destroy the GOP; or at least, pit it against itself and spur it into a ‘civil war.’ Well, that civil (liberties) war is here, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing for the GOP’s horrible image. Rand Paul did more to improve the GOP’s image in one night than these two Democratic supplicants have their entire careers.

As the Daily Caller also pointed out:

    But Graham is also raising his media profile by backing several Obama-pushed projects, including new curbs on guns, a tax increase and the immigration reform that could bring at least 11 million low-skill illegal immigrants — and eventually, their relatives —into the country.

    Graham faces a reelection campaign in 2014. His website did not offer any comment about the dinner.

The old guard acts like it hasn’t been notified of New Media yet; and is seemingly unfathoming of such things that #StandwithRand was the top Twitter trend in the world the previous night starting at 10:30 p.m., and had enough tweets at over 1 million (combined with a few other related hashtags) to rival the State of the Union address’ 1.3 million.

The old media ran cover for the two paleosenators, even calling Rand Paul’s eloquent and learned presentation ‘downright nasty.‘ But the word is getting out and the GOP establishment is on the clock. It can either learn to adapt with the times or it can continue to get shown up by Junior Senators from states like Texas and Kentucky.

[AUChizad]

Preaching to the choir here. But, a good read nonetheless.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Three-Democratic-Myths-Use-by-Glenn-Greenwald-130310-14.html

Three Democratic Myths Used To Demean The Paul Filibuster
By Glenn Greenwald (about the author)     Permalink
OpEdNews Op Eds 3/10/2013 at 15:00:45    

The progressive "empathy gap," a strain of liberal authoritarianism, and a distortion of Holder's letter are invoked to defend Obama

Rand Paul filibuster
This video frame grab provided by Senate Television shows Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. speaking on the floor of the Senate on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Photograph: AP

Commencing immediately upon the 9/11 attack, the US government under two successive administrations has spent 12 straight years inventing and implementing new theories of government power in the name of Terrorism. Literally every year since 9/11 has ushered in increased authorities of exactly the type Americans are inculcated to believe only exist in those Other, Non-Free societies: ubiquitous surveillance, impenetrable secrecy, and the power to imprison and even kill without charges or due process. Even as the 9/11 attack recedes into the distant past, the US government still finds ways continuously to increase its powers in the name of Terrorism while virtually never relinquishing any of the power it acquires. So inexorable has this process been that the Obama administration has already exercised the power to target even its own citizens for execution far from any battlefield, and the process has now arrived at its inevitable destination: does this due-process-free execution power extend to US soil as well?

All of this has taken place with very little public backlash: especially over the last four years. Worse, it has prompted almost no institutional resistance from the structures designed to check executive abuses: courts, the media, and Congress. Last week's 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan's confirmation as CIA director by GOP Sen. Rand Paul was one of the first -- and, from the perspective of media attention, easily among the most effective -- Congressional efforts to dramatize and oppose just how radical these Terrorism-justified powers have become. For the first time since the 9/11 attack, even lowly cable news shows were forced -- by the Paul filibuster -- to extensively discuss the government's extremist theories of power and to debate the need for checks and limits.

All of this put Democrats -- who spent eight years flamboyantly pretending to be champions of due process and opponents of mass secrecy and executive power abuses -- in a very uncomfortable position. The politician who took such a unique stand in defense of these principles was not merely a Republican but a leading member of its dreaded Tea Party wing, while the actor most responsible for the extremist theories of power being protested was their own beloved leader and his political party.

Some Democrats, to their credit, publicly supported Paul, including Sen. Ron Wyden, who went to the Senate floor to assist the filibuster. Sens. Jeff Merkley, Pat Leahy and (independent) Bernie Sanders all voted against Brennan's confirmation, citing many of the same concerns raised by Paul. Some prominent progressive commentators praised Paul's filibuster as well: on CNN, Van Jones -- while vowing that "I love this president" -- said "Sen. Rand Paul was a hero for civil liberties" and that "liberals and progressives should be ashamed."

But most Democratic Senators ran away as fast as possible from having anything to do with the debate: see here for the pitifully hilarious excuses they offered for not supporting the filibuster while claiming to support Paul's general cause. All of those Democratic Senators other than Merkley and Leahy (and Sanders) voted to confirm the torture-advocating, secrecy-loving, drone-embracing Brennan as CIA chief.

Meanwhile, a large bulk of the Democratic and liberal commentariat -- led, as usual, by the highly-paid DNC spokesmen called "MSNBC hosts" and echoed, as usual, by various liberal blogs, which still amusingly fancy themselves as edgy and insurgent checks on political power rather than faithful servants to it -- degraded all of the weighty issues raised by this episode by processing it through their stunted, trivial prism of partisan loyalty. They thus dutifully devoted themselves to reading from the only script they know: Democrats Good, GOP Bad.

To accomplish that, most avoided full-throated defenses of drones and the power of the president to secretly order US citizens executed without due process or transparency. They prefer to ignore the fact that the politician they most deeply admire is a devoted defender of those policies. After stumbling around for a few days in search of a tactic to convert this episode into an attack on the GOP and distract from Obama's extremism, they collectively settled on personalizing the conflict by focusing on Rand Paul's flaws as a person and a politician and, in particular, mocking his concerns as "paranoia" (that attack was echoed, among others, by the war-cheering Washington Post editorial page).

Just as conservatives feared non-existent black helicopters in the 1990s, they chortled, now conservatives are hiding under their bed thinking that Obama will kill their neighbors or themselves with drones while they relax at a barbeque in their backyard. In this they echoed Bush followers, who constantly mocked objections to Bush/Cheney executive power abuses as nothing but paranoia. Besides, they claim, Attorney General Eric Holder has now made crystal clear that Obama lacks the authority to target US citizens on US soil for execution by drone, so all of Paul's concerns are nothing more than wild conspiracies.

The reality is that Paul was doing nothing more than voicing concerns that have long been voiced by leading civil liberties groups such as the ACLU. Indeed, the ACLU lavishly praised Paul, saying that "as a result of Sen. Paul's historic filibuster, civil liberties got two wins." In particular, said the ACLU, "Americans learned about the breathtakingly broad claims of executive authority undergirding the Obama administration's vast killing program."

But almost without exception, progressives who defend Obama's Terrorism policies steadfastly ignore the fact that they are embracing policies that are vehemently denounced by the ACLU. That's because they like to tell themselves that only Big, Bad Republicans attack the ACLU -- such as when George H.W. Bush tried to marginalize Michael Dukakis in 1988 by linking him to that group -- so they ignore the ACLU and instead pretend that only right-wing figures like Rand Paul are concerned about these matters. It's remarkable indeed how frequently, in the Age of Obama, standard partisan Democrats embrace exactly the policies identified by the ACLU as the most menacing. Such Obama-defending progressives also willfully ignore just how much they now sound like Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, and George Bush when ridiculing concerns about due process for accused Terrorists:

    Bush in his 2004 Convention speech mocking John Kerry: "After the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers";

    Rove in 2005 mocking liberals: "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments";

    Palin in her 2008 RNC Convention speech mocking Obama: "Al Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights."

Find any defender of Obama's claimed power to assassinate accused Terrorists without due process and that is exactly what you will hear. That's why it is no surprise that the conservatives whom Democrats claim most to loathe - from Dick Cheney to John Yoo to Lindsey Graham to Peter King -- have been so outspoken in their defense of Obama's actions in this area (and so critical of Paul): because the premises needed to justify Obama's policies are the very ones they so controversially pioneered.

In sum, virtually all of the claims made by these progressive commentators in opposition to Paul's filibuster are false. Moreover, last week's Senate drama, and the reaction to it by various factions, reveals several critical points about how US militarism and the secrecy that enables it are sustained. I was traveling last week on a speaking tour and thus watched all of it unfold without writing about it, so I want to highlight three key points from all of this, centered around myths propagated by Democrats to demean Paul's filibuster and the concerns raised by it:
(1) Progressives and their "empathy gap"

The US government's continuous killing, due-process-free imprisonment, and other rights abuses under the War on Terror banner has affected one group far more than any other: Muslims and, increasingly, American Muslims. Politically, this has been the key fact enabling this to endure. Put simply, if you're not Muslim, it's very easy to dismiss, minimize or mock these issues because you can easily tell yourself that they don't affect you or your family and therefore there is no reason to care. And since the vast, vast majority of Democratic politicians and progressive media commentators are not Muslim, one continuously sees this mentality shaping reaction to these issues.

Yesterday, the Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole, in an interview with Mother Jones, said the key fact about US drone killings is that what "we're facing here is an empathy gap." He added:

    "Killing a bunch of people in Sudan and Yemen and Pakistan, it's like, 'Who cares -- we don't know them.' But the current discussion is framed as 'When can the President kill an American citizen?' Now in my mind, killing a non-American citizen without due process is just as criminal as killing an American citizen without due process -- but whatever gets us to the table to discuss this thing, we're going to take it."

Writing in Salon, the South-Asian-American philosophy professor Falguni Sheth blasted Democrats and progressives for leaving it to Rand Paul to protest "the White House's radical expansion of executive power." She noted: "rather than challenge a Democratic administration in defense of constitutional principles that all citizens should insist be guaranteed, Democrats embraced party tribalism." She argues in particular that as Democrats attack Paul on the grounds of his support for racist policies, they support or acquiesce to all of these War on Terror policies that have an obvious racial -- and racist -- component, in light of the very specific types of individuals who are imprisoned, and whose children are killed by drones, and whose rights are systematically abridged.

Some progressives are unintentionally candid about their self-interest leading them to dismiss these issues on the ground that it doesn't affect people like themselves. "I can think of lots of things that might frighten me, but having a drone attack me in my bed tonight is not one of them," declared one white progressive at a large liberal blog in the course of attacking Paul's filibuster. Of course that's not a concern of hers: she's not in the groups who are so targeted, so therefore the issues are irrelevant to her. Other writers at large progressive blogs have similarly admitted that they care little about "civil liberties and a less bellicose foreign policy" because they instead are "primarily interested in the well-being of the American middle-class": i.e., themselves. And, of course, the same is true of all the MSNBC hosts mocking Paul as paranoid: they are not the kind of people affected by the kinds of concerns they aggressively deride in order to defend their leader.

When you combine what Teju Cole describes as this selfish "empathy gap" among progressives with the authoritarian strain in American liberalism that worships political power and reveres political institutions (especially when their party controls them), it's unsurprising that they are so callous and dismissive of these issues (I'm not talking about those who pay little attention to these issues -- there are lots of significant issues and one can only pay attention to a finite number -- but rather those who affirmatively dismiss their significance or rationalize these policies). As Amy Goodman wrote in the Guardian: "Senator Paul's outrage with the president's claimed right to kill US citizens is entirely appropriate. That there is not more outrage at the thousands killed around the globe is shameful ... and dangerous."

For a political faction that loves to depict itself as the champions of "empathy," and which reflexively accuses others of having their political beliefs shaped by self-interest, this is an ironic fact indeed. It's also the central dynamic driving the politics of these issues: the US government and media collaborate to keep the victims of these abuses largely invisible, so we rarely have to confront them, and on those rare occasions when we do, we can easily tell ourselves (false though the assurance is) that these abuses do not affect us and our families and it's therefore only "paranoia" that can explain why someone might care so much about them.
(2) Whether domestic assassinations are imminent is irrelevant to the debate

The primary means of mocking Paul's concerns was to deride the notion that Obama is about to unleash drone attacks and death squads on US soil aimed at Americans. But nobody, including Paul, suggested that was the case. To focus on that attack is an absurd strawman, a deliberate distraction from the real issues, a total irrelevancy. That's true for two primary reasons.

First, the reason this question matters so much -- can the President target US citizens for assassination without due process on US soil? -- is because it demonstrates just how radical the Obama administration's theories of executive power are. Once you embrace the premises of everything they do in this area -- we are a Nation at War; the entire globe is the battlefield; the president is vested with the unchecked power to use force against anyone he accuses of involvement with Terrorism -- then there is no cogent, coherent way to say that the president lacks the power to assassinate even US citizens on US soil. That conclusion is the necessary, logical outcome of the premises that have been embraced. That's why it is so vital to ask that.

To see how true that is, consider the fact that a US president -- with very little backlash -- has already asserted this very theory on US soil. In 2002, the US arrested a US citizen (Jose Padilla) on US soil (at the O'Hare International Airport in Chicago), and then imprisoned him for the next three-and-a-half years in a military brig without charges of any kind. The theory was that the president has the power to declare anyone (including a US citizen) to be an "enemy combatant" and then punish him as such no matter where he is found (including US soil), even if they are not engaged in any violence at the time they are targeted (as was true for Padilla, who was simply walking unarmed through the airport). Once you accept this framework -- that this is a War; the Globe is the Battlefield; and the Commander-in-Chief is the Decider -- then the President can treat even US citizens on US soil (part of the battlefield) as "enemy combatants," and do anything he wants to them as such: imprison them without charges or order them killed.

Far from being "paranoid", this theory has already been asserted on US soil during the Bush presidency. It has been applied to US citizens by the Obama administration. It does not require "paranoia" to raise concerns about the inevitable logical outcome of these theories. Instead, it takes blind authoritarian faith in political leaders to believe that such a suggestion is so offensive and outlandish that merely to raise it is crazy. Once you embrace the US government's War on Terror framework, then there is no cogent legal argument for limiting the assassination power to foreign soil. If the Globe is a Battlefield, then that, by definition, obviously includes the US.

Second, presidents change, and so do circumstances. The belief that Barack Obama -- despite his record -- is too kind, too good, too magnanimous, too responsible to target US citizens for assassination on US soil is entirely irrelevant. At some point, there will be another president, even a Republican one, who will inherit the theories he embraces. Moreover, circumstances can change rapidly, so that -- just as happened with 9/11 -- what seems unthinkable quickly becomes not only possible but normalized.

The need to object vehemently to radical theories of power has nothing to do with a belief that the current president will exercise it in the worst possible way. The need is due to the fact that acquiescing to these powers in the first instance means that they become institutionalized -- legitimized -- and thus become impossible to resist once circumstances change (another Terrorist attack, a president you trust less). That's why it is always the tactic of governments that seek to abuse power to select the most marginalized and easily demonized targets in the first instance (Anwar Awlaki): because they know that once the citizenry cheers for that power on the ground that they dislike the target, the power then becomes institutionalized and impossible to resist when it expands outward, as it always does.

That's what Thomas Jefferson meant when he wrote: "In questions of power ... let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." It's also what Frederick Douglass meant when he warned:

    "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."

Human nature means that once you vest a power in political leaders; once you acquiesce to radical theories, that power will inevitably be abused. The time to object -- the only effective time -- is when that power theory first takes root, not later when it is finally widespread.
(3) Holder did not disclaim the power to assassinate on US soil

Defenders of the Obama administration now insist that this entire controversy has been resolved by a letter written to Paul by Attorney General Eric Holder, in which Holder wrote: "It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: 'Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?' The answer to that question is no." Despite Paul's declaration of victory, this carefully crafted statement tells us almost nothing about the actual controversy.

As Law Professor Ryan Goodman wrote yesterday in the New York Times, "The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, has acted with an overly broad definition of what it means to be engaged in combat." That phrase -- "engaged in combat" -- does not only include people who are engaged in violence at the time you detain or kill them. It includes a huge array of people who we would not normally think of, using common language, as being "engaged in combat."

Indeed, the whole point of the Paul filibuster was to ask whether the Obama administration believes that it has the power to target a US citizen for assassination on US soil the way it did to Anwar Awlaki in Yemen. The Awlaki assassination was justified on the ground that Awlaki was a "combatant," that he was "engaged in combat," even though he was killed not while making bombs or shooting at anyone but after he had left a cafe where he had breakfast. If the Obama administration believes that Awlaki was "engaged in combat" at the time he was killed -- and it clearly does -- then Holder's letter is meaningless at best, and menacing at worst, because that standard is so broad as to vest the president with exactly the power his supporters now insist he disclaimed.

The phrase "engaged in combat" has come to mean little more than: anyone the President accuses, in secrecy and with no due process, of supporting a Terrorist group. Indeed, radically broad definitions of "enemy combatant" have been at the heart of every War on Terror policy, from Guantanamo to CIA black sites to torture. As Professor Goodman wrote:

    "By declining to specify what it means to be 'engaged in combat' the letter does not foreclose the possible scenario -- however hypothetical -- of a military drone strike, against a United States citizen, on American soil. It also raises anew questions about the standards the administration has used in deciding to use drone strikes to kill Americans suspected of terrorist involvement overseas ...

    "The Obama administration's continued refusal to do so should alarm any American concerned about the constitutional right of our citizens -- no matter what evil they may or may not be engaged in -- to due process under the law. For those Americans, Mr. Holder's seemingly simple but maddeningly vague letter offers no reassurance."

Indeed, as both Law Professor Kevin Jon Heller and Marcy Wheeler noted, Holder, by deleting the word "actively" from Paul's question (can you kill someone not "actively engaged in combat"?), raised more questions than he answered. As Professor Heller wrote:

    "'Engaged in combat' seems like a much broader standard than 'senior operational leader,' which the recently disclosed White Paper described as a necessary condition of killing an American citizen overseas. Does that mean the President can kill an American citizen inside the US who is a lower-ranking member of al-Qaeda or an associated force? ...

    "What does 'engaged in combat' mean? That is a particularly important question, given that Holder did not restrict killing an American inside the US to senior operational leaders and deleted 'actively' from Paul's question. Does 'engaging' require participation in planning or executing a terrorist attack? Does any kind of direct participation in hostilities qualify? Do acts short of direct participation in hostilities -- such as financing terrorism or propagandizing -- qualify? Is mere membership, however loosely defined by the US, enough?"

Particularly since the Obama administration continues to conceal the legal memos defining its claimed powers -- memos we would need to read to understand what it means by "engaged in combat" -- the Holder letter should exacerbate concerns, not resolve them. As Digby, comparing Bush and Obama legal language on these issues, wrote yesterday about Holder's letter: "It's fair to say that these odd phrasings and very particular choices of words are not an accident and anyone with common sense can tell instantly that by being so precise, they are hiding something."

At best, Holder's letter begs the question: what do you mean when you accuse someone of being "engaged in combat"? And what are the exact limits of your power to target US citizens for execution without due process? That these questions even need to be asked underscores how urgently needed Paul's filibuster was, and how much more serious push-back is still merited. But the primary obstacle to this effort has been, and remains, that the Democrats who spent all that time parading around as champions of these political values are now at the head of the line leading the war against them.
Related matters

While the Obama administration continues to resist judicial review and statutory disclosure on all of these matters by invoking secrecy, dozens of current and former Obama officials (yet again) ran to the New York Times to anonymously justify what the US government is doing (specifically what it did in the Awlaki case), and the New York Times (yet again) published an incredibly sympathetic version of events based on what they were told. Marcy Wheeler will spend the day dissecting the worst parts of that NYT story, but last night she began with one particularly egregious attempt to justify what Obama administration lawyers David Barron and Marty Lederman did when legally authorizing the assassination.

Last week, in Portland, I gave the keynote speech to the ACLU in Oregon's annual Liberty Dinner, and that 25-minute speech related to many of the issues discussed here (the ACLU speech was the abridged version of the one I gave several times last week, usually lasting roughly 45 minutes; I'll post the longer version once it's online):

[Vandy Vol]

You admit Holder didn't clarify anything when asked.  That was bad enough and many people do not trust this administration, so Paul was making sure he got that clarification. 

Honestly, I think Paul was trying to convey his displeasure with the current government overstepping its bounds and bring it to America's attention.  I think he was successful.

His reaction of "Hooray!" when he read Holder's response didn't really convey that he thought the government overstepped its bounds in regard to the drone issue.

Maybe he doesn't agree with the DoJ and Holder's conclusion and thinks that the government has gone too far, but he sure hasn't voiced any displeasure or disagreement with it yet.  We had a 13 hour filibuster that appears to have been nothing but a dramatic display of political bickering by trying to force the attorney general to answer a question that had already been answered.

I agree that Holder should have clarified it sooner, but I still don't see why this was an issue that required 13 hours of drama when all Rand wanted was an answer that had already been given by the DoJ.

Honestly, I think this was a political ploy to make it look as if the government was doing something shady and wanting the ability to kill citizens on a whim.  In reality, the DoJ had explained in a memo when a drone strike could be used, but they chose to latch on to Holder's vague use of "extraordinary circumstances" to skew what the government had concluded on the issue.

[GH2001]

His reaction of "Hooray!" when he read Holder's response didn't really convey that he thought the government overstepped its bounds in regard to the drone issue.

Maybe he doesn't agree with the DoJ and Holder's conclusion and thinks that the government has gone too far, but he sure hasn't voiced any displeasure or disagreement with it yet.  We had a 13 hour filibuster that appears to have been nothing but a dramatic display of political bickering by trying to force the attorney general to answer a question that had already been answered.

I agree that Holder should have clarified it sooner, but I still don't see why this was an issue that required 13 hours of drama when all Rand wanted was an answer that had already been given by the DoJ.

Honestly, I think this was a political ploy to make it look as if the government was doing something shady and wanting the ability to kill citizens on a whim.  In reality, the DoJ had explained in a memo when a drone strike could be used, but they chose to latch on to Holder's vague use of "extraordinary circumstances" to skew what the government had concluded on the issue.

We have Holder/Obama/McCain vs Paul and you think Paul is the one pulling political ploys? Fuck me. Then were done as a country.

You're the only person I know that thinks Holder answered that question the first time around. 

[AUChizad]

We have Holder/Obama/McCain vs Paul and you think Paul is the one pulling political ploys? Fuck me. Then were done as a country.

You're the only person I know that thinks Holder answered that question the first time around.

He still hasn't.

From that piece I posted above (which I know is long, but really is a good read):

(3) Holder did not disclaim the power to assassinate on US soil

Defenders of the Obama administration now insist that this entire controversy has been resolved by a letter written to Paul by Attorney General Eric Holder, in which Holder wrote: "It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: 'Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?' The answer to that question is no." Despite Paul's declaration of victory, this carefully crafted statement tells us almost nothing about the actual controversy.

As Law Professor Ryan Goodman wrote yesterday in the New York Times, "The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, has acted with an overly broad definition of what it means to be engaged in combat." That phrase -- "engaged in combat" -- does not only include people who are engaged in violence at the time you detain or kill them. It includes a huge array of people who we would not normally think of, using common language, as being "engaged in combat."

Indeed, the whole point of the Paul filibuster was to ask whether the Obama administration believes that it has the power to target a US citizen for assassination on US soil the way it did to Anwar Awlaki in Yemen. The Awlaki assassination was justified on the ground that Awlaki was a "combatant," that he was "engaged in combat," even though he was killed not while making bombs or shooting at anyone but after he had left a cafe where he had breakfast. If the Obama administration believes that Awlaki was "engaged in combat" at the time he was killed -- and it clearly does -- then Holder's letter is meaningless at best, and menacing at worst, because that standard is so broad as to vest the president with exactly the power his supporters now insist he disclaimed.

The phrase "engaged in combat" has come to mean little more than: anyone the President accuses, in secrecy and with no due process, of supporting a Terrorist group. Indeed, radically broad definitions of "enemy combatant" have been at the heart of every War on Terror policy, from Guantanamo to CIA black sites to torture. As Professor Goodman wrote:

    "By declining to specify what it means to be 'engaged in combat' the letter does not foreclose the possible scenario -- however hypothetical -- of a military drone strike, against a United States citizen, on American soil. It also raises anew questions about the standards the administration has used in deciding to use drone strikes to kill Americans suspected of terrorist involvement overseas ...

    "The Obama administration's continued refusal to do so should alarm any American concerned about the constitutional right of our citizens -- no matter what evil they may or may not be engaged in -- to due process under the law. For those Americans, Mr. Holder's seemingly simple but maddeningly vague letter offers no reassurance."

Indeed, as both Law Professor Kevin Jon Heller and Marcy Wheeler noted, Holder, by deleting the word "actively" from Paul's question (can you kill someone not "actively engaged in combat"?), raised more questions than he answered. As Professor Heller wrote:

    "'Engaged in combat' seems like a much broader standard than 'senior operational leader,' which the recently disclosed White Paper described as a necessary condition of killing an American citizen overseas. Does that mean the President can kill an American citizen inside the US who is a lower-ranking member of al-Qaeda or an associated force? ...

    "What does 'engaged in combat' mean? That is a particularly important question, given that Holder did not restrict killing an American inside the US to senior operational leaders and deleted 'actively' from Paul's question. Does 'engaging' require participation in planning or executing a terrorist attack? Does any kind of direct participation in hostilities qualify? Do acts short of direct participation in hostilities -- such as financing terrorism or propagandizing -- qualify? Is mere membership, however loosely defined by the US, enough?"

Particularly since the Obama administration continues to conceal the legal memos defining its claimed powers -- memos we would need to read to understand what it means by "engaged in combat" -- the Holder letter should exacerbate concerns, not resolve them. As Digby, comparing Bush and Obama legal language on these issues, wrote yesterday about Holder's letter: "It's fair to say that these odd phrasings and very particular choices of words are not an accident and anyone with common sense can tell instantly that by being so precise, they are hiding something."

At best, Holder's letter begs the question: what do you mean when you accuse someone of being "engaged in combat"? And what are the exact limits of your power to target US citizens for execution without due process? That these questions even need to be asked underscores how urgently needed Paul's filibuster was, and how much more serious push-back is still merited. But the primary obstacle to this effort has been, and remains, that the Democrats who spent all that time parading around as champions of these political values are now at the head of the line leading the war against them.

[Vandy Vol]

You're the only person I know that thinks Holder answered that question the first time around.

I'm pretty sure that I've expressly and repeatedly said that Holder should have clarified the issue sooner than he did.  Not sure where you're getting that I think Holder answered any question the first time around.

All I'm saying is that they already had the answer they were wanting Holder to give from the DoJ.  Once Holder gave an answer that was nearly identical to what the DoJ had said in regard to enemy combatants, Rand was appeased and has since not made any arguments or statements about the government overstepping its bounds.

If the DoJ has already answered the question being asked, and if Rand has no problem with that answer, then what else was the filibuster except a political ploy to make the public think that the government was doing something shady?  If Rand has no problem with Holder's explanation of when drones can be used, and this explanation was already present in the DoJ memo, then why was he suggesting that the government could kill U.S. citizens for absurd reasons, such as when Jane Fonda visited North Vietnam? 

Nothing within the DoJ memo (again, to my understanding) suggested that such a scenario would be possible under the DoJ's reasoning, but it was a perfect chance for fear mongering simply because Holder made the public relations mistake of using only the phrase "extraordinary circumstances," and not by explaining that an American citizen would have to be deemed an enemy combatant.  Unless Rand didn't read the DoJ memo and failed to read about it in the news, he knew better than to make some of the ludicrous claims that he did.

He still hasn't.

Holder used the term "noncombatant."  The DoJ also referred to "enemy combatants."  Although Holder didn't cite to them, those have legal definitions.  I'm not overly familiar with the case law relating to those definitions, but SCOTUS has written opinions out there which address the topic.

Again, maybe Holder should have elaborated a bit on those terms, but the answer is out there.  Rand didn't want to look for it, however, as he wanted to put on a show and make the administration look bad when, in actuality, they appear to be abiding by the law as far as who can be considered an enemy combatant and whether due process applies.

[GH2001]

I'm pretty sure that I've expressly and repeatedly said that Holder should have clarified the issue sooner than he did.  Not sure where you're getting that I think Holder answered any question the first time around.

All I'm saying is that they already had the answer they were wanting Holder to give from the DoJ.  Once Holder gave an answer that was nearly identical to what the DoJ had said in regard to enemy combatants, Rand was appeased and has since not made any arguments or statements about the government overstepping its bounds.

If the DoJ has already answered the question being asked, and if Rand has no problem with that answer, then what else was the filibuster except a political ploy to make the public think that the government was doing something shady?  If Rand has no problem with Holder's explanation of when drones can be used, and this explanation was already present in the DoJ memo, then why was he suggesting that the government could kill U.S. citizens for absurd reasons, such as when Jane Fonda visited North Vietnam? 

Nothing within the DoJ memo (again, to my understanding) suggested that such a scenario would be possible under the DoJ's reasoning, but it was a perfect chance for fear mongering simply because Holder made the public relations mistake of using only the phrase "extraordinary circumstances," and not by explaining that an American citizen would have to be deemed an enemy combatant.  Unless Rand didn't read the DoJ memo and failed to read about it in the news, he knew better than to make some of the ludicrous claims that he did.

Holder used the term "noncombatant."  The DoJ also referred to "enemy combatants."  Although Holder didn't cite to them, those have legal definitions.  I'm not overly familiar with the case law relating to those definitions, but SCOTUS has written opinions out there which address the topic.

Again, maybe Holder should have elaborated a bit on those terms, but the answer is out there.  Rand didn't want to look for it, however, as he wanted to put on a show and make the administration look bad when, in actuality, they appear to be abiding by the law as far as who can be considered an enemy combatant and whether due process applies.

A contingent and open ended answer is not an acceptable answer in regards to the subject matter.

[Vandy Vol]

A contingent and open ended answer is not an acceptable answer in regards to the subject matter.

Contingent and open ended in what way?  Again, "enemy combatant" is a term that is defined in SCOTUS opinions and international treaties.  The definition of that term is not contingent upon what the President or any other politician wants it to mean, absent new legislation or agreements which change those definitions, of course.

[Snaggletiger]

Contingent and open ended in what way?  Again, "enemy combatant" is a term that is defined in SCOTUS opinions and international treaties.  The definition of that term is not contingent upon what the President or any other politician wants it to mean, absent new legislation or agreements which change those definitions, of course.

You're starting to sound combative to me.  Don't make me drone your ass.

[Vandy Vol]

You're starting to sound combative to me.  Don't make me drone your ass.

Is that a sexual innuendo?  Because I'm strangely aroused right now.

[dallaswareagle]

You're starting to sound combative to me.  Don't make me drone your ass.

I'll have to barrow this and try it on the Mrs. I tell her its for National security. 

[GH2001]

Is that a sexual innuendo?  Because I'm strangely aroused right now.

Why strangely?

[Vandy Vol]

Why strangely?

Did I say strangely?  I meant to say predictably.