Nick Gillespie @ Hit & Run:
Jay Carney, the chief spokesman for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, wants you to know that President Barack Obama’s controversial use of dronesisn’t just sort-of borderline defensible. Nope:
“These strikes are legal, they are ethical and they are wise,” Carney said. The government takes “great care” when deciding where and whom to strike, he added.
How much care does the White House take in assessing who it wants to bomb (often in countries with which the U.S. is not officially at war)? So much care that it doesn’t feel a need to get legal authorization from either the judicial or legislative branches of the federal government. And in case you want to rest easy that Obama has top men on it, here’s a summary of the process written by NBC News’ Michael Isikoff, who leaked the confidential memo the administration didn’t want you to see:
[T]he confidential Justice Department “white paper” introduces a more expansive definition of self-defense or imminent attack than described by Brennan or Holder in their public speeches. It refers, for example, to what it calls a “broader concept of imminence” than actual intelligence about any ongoing plot against the U.S. homeland.
Instead, it says, an “informed, high-level” official of the U.S. government may determine that the targeted American has been “recently” involved in “activities” posing a threat of a violent attack and “there is no evidence suggesting that he has renounced or abandoned such activities.” The memo does not define “recently” or “activities.
Read more – including the memo itself – here
What else is in the news today regarding the most transparent administration in history? A report documenting that 54 countries around the globe have played along with the CIA when it comes to torturing suspects in such a way that the U.S. can pretend it doesn’t do that sort of thing anymore.
There is a darkly comic aspect to this, I suppose:
