Category Archives: Law
Turkey Kill List
Drones are something most us are thankful for. Even Romney and Obama agree they are swell.
Me, not so much. I get the Hiroshima argument that drones save our guys by killing bad guys along with others. But the idea of President Obama keeping a kill list and acting as judge, jury, and executioner gives me the creeps. Especially when his target is an American citizen terrorist like al-Awlaki.
Not that I’m sorry al-Awlaki is toes up, or however his toes are, but I’d have preferred to see him captured, questioned, and indulged with a few of his same constitutional rights as Obama tried to shower on Pakistani 9/11 killer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Why is the president indignant about water boarding a foreign terrorist, but proud to use the information water boarding produces to help him assassinate an U.S. citizen terrorist?
My favorite atheist right-to-lifer, Nat Hentoff, got me on this jag last week when he wrote this column about Obama and the Rule of Law. Here’s one Nat wrote for the Cato Institute in October about drone assassination . He’s authorized to say “dig this” since he’s also a jazz writer.
Anyway, enjoy your cranberry sauce. Happy Thanksgiving!
Final Vote
2012 early voting, absentee voting, election day voting – it’s over! Let the lawyering begin.
Paul Ryan
Romney’s choice of Ryan as his running mate will make the campaign less negative. That’s because now there’s a candidate I actually like.
Ryan’s a serious person. In February 2010 the president hosted a health care summit. He played the role of professor, addressing his congressional charges by their first names. Of course, it was all Mr. President to them. He seemed pleased with the arrangement. That was until until Ryan schooled him with his detailed criticism of the president’s own plan. The pique on the prez’s face is priceless in this video (It runs 6 minutes but you see The Face early on.)
Obama later took his revenge by inviting Ryan to sit in the front row for a speech about health care and entitlements. There he insulted his guest by suggesting his plan was un-American.
An unbowed Ryan stood up to the bully-in-chief with this response.
Ryan is still unbowed. I think his remarks yesterday in his first speech as a VP candidate, about our rights coming from nature and God, and not Governments, were directed at Obama. And I suspect the president is not 100% bought into the founders’ thinking on that subject. His seems more a philosophy where he bestows rights, waivers, and penalties on winners and losers of his own choosing.
Two views of government stand in clear contrast here. Ryan adds Jack Kemp style seriousness to Romney’s more free floating managerial skills. Ryan, and now Romney, will try to preserve a government of laws built on classical liberal values. Obama didn’t build that, somebody else did. But he does seem to be trying to rebuild something else.
Flying Squirrel
The London 2012 Olympics has become, in many ways, a no free speech zone in order to protect the branding rights of “approved global sponsors”. Here’s a helpful list of words to avoid.
