Exclusive: Can the President Order a Killing on U.S. Soil?
Newsweek
[Excerpts]
Feb. 13, 2006 issue - In the latest twist in the debate over presidential powers, a Justice Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States. Steven Bradbury, acting head of the department's Office of Legal Counsel, went to a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week to defend President George W. Bush's surveillance program.
University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein says the post-9/11 congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force against Al Qaeda empowered the president to kill 9/11 perpetrators, or people who assisted their plot, whether they were overseas or inside the United States. On the other hand, Sunstein says, the president would be on less solid legal ground were he to order the killing of a terror suspect in the United States who was not actively preparing an attack.
—Mark Hosenball © 2006 Newsweek, Inc. © 2006 MSNBC.com
Read the full Newsweek story here.
My thoughts on this:
We have been getting the first season of Alias here lately. Anita and I (who never heard of the show before and don't watch much TV at all) have become addicts. The show is as an absolutely perfect demonstration of Siegel's First Law of Media -- it it looks right, it is right.
Alias doesn't always make much sense. How can Jack and Sydney Bristow go to the CIA psychiatrist without being observed by SD-6, for example? I looked through the episode summaries to find an explanation. No luck. maybe I am just missing something.
None of that matters because the people are so beautiful, the acting is so great and the photography is just plan outright sublime.
When I was young, police in British movies always read the suspects their rights. I later felt that made the Miranda decision inevitable in the United States. Seeing Alias, I realized how all this spy stuff sets the context for the American acceptance of government lawlessness. It is expected that secret agents will kill people with perfect impunity. They see it on TV all the time.
I am also noticing the pervasive necrophilia. I don't mean people getting killed, but the morbid fascination with dead bodies, ghosts, the morgue. I guess as the baby boom faces death, necrophilia replaces sex as the principal obsession. There are several series devoted to this.
Posted by jules_siegel at February 5, 2006 01:58 PM