THOUGHTS

HOW ABOUT A CORK?

OBAMACARE PENALTY BOX

BOTTOMLESS SINKHOLE

OBAMACARE GEEK

DAMNED DOMESTIC TERRORISTS

IS IT MURDER, OR IS IT NOT?

A legal way to kill?

Obama’s veil of secrecy is pierced

By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

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When President Obama decided sometime during his first term that he wanted to be able to use unmanned aerial drones in foreign lands to kill people — including Americans — he instructed Attorney General Eric H. Holder to find a way to make it legal, despite the absolute prohibition on governmental extrajudicial killing in federal and state laws and in the Constitution itself.

“Judicial killing” connotes a lawful execution after an indictment, a jury trial, an appeal and all of the due-process protections that the Constitution guarantees defendants. “Extrajudicial killing” is a targeted killing of a victim by someone in the executive branch without due process. The president wanted the latter, and he wanted it in secret.

He must have hoped his killing would never come to light, because the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution could not be more direct: “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”

Due process has a few prongs. The first is substantive, meaning the outcome must be fair. In a capital murder case, for example, the defendant must not only be found guilty by a jury, but he also must truly be guilty.

The second prong of due process is procedural. Thus, the defendant must be charged with a crime and tried before a neutral jury. He is entitled to a lawyer, to confront the witnesses against him and to remain silent. The trial must be presided over by a neutral judge, and in the case of a conviction, the defendant is entitled to an appeal before a panel of three neutral judges.

The third prong of due process means that the defendant is entitled to the procedures “of law”; that is, in the federal system, as Congress has enacted.

There are numerous additional aspects of due process, the basics of which emanate from the Constitution itself. Yet, the “of law” modifier of the constitutional phrase “due process” gives Congress — not the president — the ability to add to the due-process tools available to a defendant. Congress may subtract what it has added, but neither Congress nor the president may remove any of the tools available to the defendant under the Constitution.

Until now.

Now, we have a president whose principal law enforcement and intelligence officers have boasted that the president relies on a legal way to kill people without the time, trouble and cost of due process. The president himself, as well as the attorney general, boasted of this, as did the director of national intelligence and the director of the CIA.

Yet when asked by reporters for The New York Times for this legal rationale, Mr. Holder declined to provide it. He argued that the legal rationale for the presidential use of extrajudicial killings was a state secret, and he dispatched Department of Justice lawyers to court, where they succeeded in persuading a federal judge in New York City to deny The New York Times’ application to order the government’s legal rationale revealed.

How can a legal rationale possibly be a state secret? The facts upon which it is based could be secret, but the laws are public, the judicial opinions interpreting those laws are public, and there are no secret, nonpublic parts of the Constitution. Yet notwithstanding the above observations, The Times lost.

The judge who dismissed the case obviously was uncomfortable doing so. She wrote: “The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me; but after careful and extensive consideration, I find myself struck by a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules — a veritable Catch-22. I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reason for their conclusion a secret.”

Two weeks after Judge Colleen McMahon begrudgingly dismissed that case, the feds decided to gloat, and so they leaked a 16-page summary of their “secrets” to a reporter at NBC News. To the federal appeals court to which The Times appealed, that was the last straw.

It is one thing, the appellate court ruled, for the president and his team to boast that they know how to kill legally by finding a secret “adequate substitute” for due process and keeping the secret a secret, but it’s quite another for them to reveal a summary of their secrets to their favorite reporters.

Thus, earlier this week, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit unanimously ordered the Justice Department to reveal publicly its heretofore secret rationale for extrajudicial killing.

Welcome to the strange new world of Mr. Obama’s war on terrorism, in which there are no declarations of war against countries that foment or harbor enemy activities, as the Constitution authorizes, and in which the president claims the powers of a king by killing whomever he wishes under a rationale that his lawyers wrote for him and that he has desperately tried to keep secret.

The Obama administration is probably right to fear the revelation of this so-called legal way to kill. The appellate court decision is a profound and sweeping rejection of the Obama administration’s passion for hiding behind a veil of secrecy. It is not a decision on the merits, though: It does not address whether the president may kill, and it only lifts a small corner of his veil.

We already know that behind Mr. Obama’s veil lies a disingenuous president who claims he can secretly kill fellow Americans. Who knows what else we will find?

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is an analyst for the Fox News Channel. He has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution.

NOT EVEN A SMIDGEN

RIGHT ON!

A MUST READ: HARRY REID'S LAST ROUNDUP

In my email, evidently originating from wnd.com is this outstanding and informative piece about what's behind the Bundy Ranch BLM oppressive actions:

 

HARRY REID'S LAST ROUNDUP

Exclusive: Joseph Farah exposes China deal possibly driving fed action against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy who performed a remarkable public service for America over the last couple weeks. 

He exposed the utter ruthlessness, brutishness and Gestapo tactics of the federal government in dealing with honest, hard-working Americans who live off the land – our land.  Claiming Bundy’s cattle ranching operation was endangering desert tortoises, the Bureau of Land Management treated him like he was Ted Bundy. I take that back. The serial rapist, mass murderer and necrophile got due process. 

When Cliven Bundy’s neighbors turned out to support him, as good American neighbors should, the BLM sent in helicopters, four-wheel-drive vehicles and an estimated 200 armed officers to deal with the cowboy and his family, threatening another Ruby Ridge or Waco-style slaughter.  But I don’t think it was about tortoises. No, sir. In fact, with all the gear and manpower the BLM brought to Clark County to round up the cowboy and his cattle, they did more environmental damage to the area than Cliven Bundy ever could have dreamed of doing.

This was about something else. 

It’s always about something else. 

Maybe – just maybe – it had to do with another Nevadan by the name of Harry Reid.  It seems the Senate majority leader has been doing favors for a Chinese energy giant ENN, which has plans to build massive solar facilities in that area – tortoises or no tortoises.  It seems the director of BLM is Reid’s former senior adviser, Neil Kornze. BLM had posted on its website documents stating the agency wanted Bundy’s cattle off of the land his family has worked for over 140 years in order to make way for solar panel power stations. The agency removed it when the standoff became national news.  

“Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the presence of trespass cattle,” the document states.  That would be the Chinese solar plant – the Management, or BLM.

They were getting a mega-deal. On April 3, 3012, Bloomberg reported Chinese billionaire Wang Yusuo, one of China’s richest citizens and the founder of ENN, had teamed up with Harry Reid to win incentives including land 113 miles southeast of Las Vegas that ENN sought to buy for $4.5 million, less than one-eighth of the land’s $38.6 million assessed value. 

But the story gets better. Harry Reid’s son, Rory Reid, was the chief representative for a Chinese energy firm planning to build a $5-billion solar plant on public land in Laughlin, Nev.  A Reuters report stated: “[Reid] and his oldest son, Rory, are both involved in an effort by a Chinese energy giant, ENN Energy Group, to build a $5 billion solar farm and panel manufacturing plant in the southern Nevada desert. Reid has been one of the project’s most prominent advocates, helping recruit the company during a 2011 trip to China and applying his political muscle on behalf of the project in Nevada. His son, a lawyer with a prominent Las Vegas firm that is representing ENN, helped it locate a 9,000-acre (3,600-hectare) desert site that it is buying well below appraised value from Clark County, where Rory Reid formerly chaired the county commission.”  

And there’s an even bigger story of scandal and corruption still beneath this show of force by the BLM, orchestrated by Harry Reid.  On Jan. 20, 2013, WND warned Chinese government-backed economists were proposing a plan to allow Chinese corporations to set up “development zones” in the United States as part of a plan proposed by the Chinese government to convert into equity the more than $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury debt owned by the Chinese government.  The next day, Jan. 21, 2013, WND documented the Obama administration had begun to allow China to acquire major ownership interests in oil and natural gas resources across the USA.  

The first major intrusion of China in the U.S. oil and natural gas market can be traced to the Obama administration decision in October 2009 to allow state-owned Chinese energy giant China Offshore Oil Corporation, or CNOOC, to purchase a multi-million-dollar stake in 600,000 acres of South Texas oil and gas fields.  By allowing China to have equity interests in U.S. oil and natural gas production, the Obama administration reversed a policy of the Bush administration that in 2005 blocked China on grounds of national security concerns from an $18.4-billion deal in which China planned to purchase California-based Unocal Corp. 

China’s two, giant, state-owned oil companies acquiring oil and natural gas interests in the USA are CNOOC, 100 percent owned by the government of the People’s Republic of China, and Sinopec Group, the largest shareholder of Sinopac Corporation, an investment company owned by the government of the People’s Republic of China, incorporated in China in 1998, largely to acquire and operate oil and natural gas interests worldwide.  

On March 6, 2012, the Wall Street Journal compiled a state-by-state list of the $17 billion in oil and natural gas equity interests CNOOC and Sinopec have acquired in the United States since 2010.

·         Colorado: CNOOC gained a one-third stake in 800,000 acres in northeast Colorado and southwest Wyoming in a $1.27-billion pact with Chesapeake Energy Corporation.

·        

·         Louisiana: Sinopec has a one-third interest in 265,000 acres in the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale after a broader $2.5-billion deal with Devon Energy.

·        

·         Michigan: Sinopec gained a one-third interest in 350,000 acres in a larger $2.5-billion deal with Devon Energy.

·        

·         Ohio: Sinopec acquired a one-third interest in Devon Energy’s 235,000 Utica Shale acres in a larger $2.5-billion deal.

·        

·         Oklahoma: Sinopec has a one-third interest in 215,000 acres in a broader $2.5-billion deal with Devon Energy.

·        

·         Texas: CNOOC acquired a one-third interest in Chesapeake Energy’s 600,000 acres in the Eagle Ford Shale in a $2.16-billion deal.

·        

·         Wyoming: CNOOC has a one-third stake in northeast Colorado and southeast Wyoming after a $1.27-billion pact with Chesapeake Energy. Sinopec gained a one-third interest in Devon Energy’s 320,000 acres as part of a larger $2.5-billion deal.  

On March 6, 2012, in a separate story, the Wall Street Journal described that China’s strategy implemented since 2010 by Fu Chengyu, who has served as chairman of both CNOOC and Sinopec, involved the following components: “Seek minority states, play a passive role, and, in a nod to U.S. regulators, keep Chinese personnel at arm’s length from advanced U.S. technology.”  

But back to Cliven Bundy and Harry Reid.

Remember Solyndra?  ENN intended to create solar energy farms on the Nevada land, despite the nearly 50 percent plunge in solar panel prices globally in the previous 15 months that led to the bankruptcy of solar equipment maker Solyndra LLC, which had received approximately $535 million in U.S. government loan guarantees.  And, yes, money exchanged hands between ENN and Reid. The Chinese energy company contributed $40,650 individually and through its political action committee to Sen. Reid over the previous three election cycles.  

Reid was recruited by ENN during a 2011 trip he took to China with nine other U.S. senators, supposedly to invite Chinese investment in the United States. The Senate group accompanying Reid on his 2011 trip to China included six other Democrats and three Republicans: Richard Shelby, R-Ala.; Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.; Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.; Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.; Johnny Isakson, R-Ga.; Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; and Michael Bennet, D-Colo.  

Thank you, Cliven Bundy for bringing all of this to the public’s attention.

America is with you.  

I am with you.  

Enough is enough.  

Thank you for exposing how crony capitalism works hand in hand with phony environmentalism.  Indeed, as Kris Kristofferson once wrote, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”  

Media wishing to interview Joseph Farah, please contact media@wnd.com.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/harry-reids-last-roundup/#giDjou5Tc0TMDHuJ.99

HAPPY EASTER FROM A REAL PLAYBOY BUNNY

IT'S A FACT

WHY NOT?

THINGS THAT MATTER

SPEAKING OF TAXES

JUSTIFIABLE RESULTS

DEMOCRAT PARTY UNDERSTUDY

DEMOCRATS IN ACTION

One morning 3 South Georgia good old boys and 3 Yankees were in a ticket line at the Albany train station heading to Athens for a big football game.  

The 3 Northerners each bought a ticket and watched as the 3 Southerners bought just one ticket among them.  "How are the 3 of you going to travel on one 1 ticket?" asked one of the Yankees.

"Watch and learn" answered one of the boys from the South.
When the 6 travelers boarded the train, the 3 Yankees sat down, but the 3 Southerners crammed into a bathroom together and closed the door.  Shortly after the train departed, the conductor came around to collect tickets.  

He knocked on the bathroom door and said, "tickets please." the door opened just a crack and a single arm emerged with a ticket in hand. The Conductor took it and moved on.  

The Yankees saw this happen and agreed it was quite a clever idea.. Indeed, so clever that they decided to do the same thing on the return trip and save some money.  That evening after the game when they got to the Charlotte train station, they bought a single ticket for the return trip while to their astonishment the 3 Southerners didn't buy even 1 ticket.
"How are you going to travel without a ticket?" asked one of the perplexed Yankees.  

"Watch and learn", answered one of the Southern boys.
When they boarded the train the 3 Northerners crammed themselves into a bathroom and the 3 Southerners crammed themselves into the other bathroom across from it.  

Shortly after the train began to move, one of the Southerners left their bathroom and walked quietly over to the Yankee's bathroom. He knocked on the door and said "ticket please".  

There's just no way on God 's green earth to explain how the Yankees won the war...