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What happend to Due Process?

The police show up to your house, because a report was placed about gun fire coming from your home. They walk in and see a dead man on your living room floor and you are a few feet away from the body with your trusty hand gun placed on the floor.

You then state; "he entered my home, uninvited - he was an intruder". No signs of breaking in and entering. It's 2 am in the morning.

According to the fears of the OP, this man should not have been shot.
 
Macamus Prime said:
According to the fears of the OP, this man should not have been shot.
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You do not know the difference between and threat, and an immediate threat?

Smoking cigarettes poses a threat to your health.

Being in a house that is on fire poses an immediate threat to your health.



EagleKeeper said:
When it is demonstrated that they commit treason against the United States.

The panel is the jury!
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The panel is not judge and jury, and the people are entitled to a jury of their peers.
 
Macamus Prime said:
Yes.

Remember, no signs of broken entry. Again, according to your logic, he should have been detained and tried for trespassing - not shot (executed).
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By my logic:

If someone does not pose an immediate threat, they are entitled to be arrested, and given a fair trial.

If someone poses an immediate threat, shoot to kill.

A panel that instructs the president to kill people, is like a city council deciding what drug dealer the police should kill.

We would not tolerate a local city council instructing the chief of police to kill people in the community, but for some reason its ok for the president to do it?

Just because that drug dealer, or car thief "might" commit a crime is no reason to put the person to death. To keep crime down, the city council is going to instruct the mayor and chief of police to kill people before they have the chance to commit the crime. How is that supposed to be ok?
 
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Texashiker said:
Since when does a panel of people have the right to sentence US citizens to death without a trial by jury?

http://news.yahoo.com/secret-panel-put-americans-kill-list-041603267.html
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"Two principal legal theories were advanced, an official said: first, that the actions were permitted by Congress when it authorized the use of military forces against militants in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001; and they are permitted under international law if a country is defending itself."

The panel didn't sentence a US citizen to death, it determined that the evidence warranted the assassination of one US citizen as per Congressional instructions and international law. Once it was established he had the legal authority to kill a citizen the President issued that order.

It's something to think about if you think your citizenship will protect you as you devotedly work to kill as many innocent citizens as you can.

What do you think would happen today to a plane full of truly innocent American citizens if it were known to have been hijacked by Al Quaeda and heading to Washington DC?
 
Moonbeam said:
The panel didn't sentence a US citizen to death, it determined that the evidence warranted the assassination of one US citizen
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Would we tolerate a secret panel telling the local mayor that a certain criminal needs to be assassinated?

If our federal government is going to abolish the jury and institute a secret panel, what is to stop cities and counties all over the nation from doing the same thing?

Just think of the money we can save with bypassing the trial and appeals process.

Local police - "We have information that a drug dealer is planning on a drive by shooting"

Secret panel - "Go ahead and kill the person before they have the chance to do the drive by"

And that is what our federal government has done.

If we are going to put people to death for inciting violence, we need to start with hate groups here in the USA.

Local police - "we have a hate group talking about blacks and jews"

Secret panel - "go ahead and kill all of the people involved with the group"
 
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What is the point of law if we're just going to arbitrarily enforce it? I think the dude deserved to die, but if the law states he was due a trial and they didn't give it to him. That's on them and no matter how much I think the guy should have died, I believe the State has a even bigger obligation of enforcing our laws equally and fairly.
 
While I am not sorry to see the guy dead I kinda agree.
I think the proper way to go about this would have to been to either have a trial (with or without him) and/or revoke his citizenship.
 
Patranus they might have caught flak for having a trial to revoke his citizenship and he wasn't there, but that probably would have been a good course of action.
 
CrackRabbit said:
Don't you have three other threads on this topic already?
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No, this thread is about a panel of people acting as judge and jury.

The other threads were about US citizens not getting due process.


If the US government can have a panel to decide if a US citizen lives or dies, what is stopping cities, counties or even states from enacting the same thing?

Lets say someone living in California is smuggling drugs into Texas. If Texas acted like the federal government, a panel in Texas would instruct the Texas Rangers to go to California and kill that person.

If its ok for the federal government to have a panel of people that determines if a US citizen should be assassinated, why can't Texas, New York, California, Florida,,,,, do it?
 
Texashiker: By my logic:

If someone does not pose an immediate threat, they are entitled to be arrested, and given a fair trial.

M: What takes place in your logic means nothing. The legal issues here have nothing to do with immediate threat, they have to do with imminent threat: The definition of an imminent threat is this:

"Imminent threat is a standard criterion in international law, developed by Daniel Webster, for when the need for action is "instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation." In such a case, he argued, the use of force in self-defense is justified."

The use of force in self defense is justified against a threatening citizen. When a window of opportunity arises to take out a threat, as it did with this dude, the opportunity must be seized with all alacrity, least the window close. We are talking here about a person plotting the deaths of American citizens hiding as best he can from the law, thousands or miles away in a country without effective capacity or the will to bring him to justice.

T: If someone poses an immediate threat, shoot to kill.

M: Any time the police attempt to arrest a citizen for speeding away from a bank, say, they are in immediate threat. But the extent of the threat is unknown. Only a mad person would kill people just because he felt under threat. The nature and extent of the threat is the real issue, not it's existence.

T: A panel that instructs the president to kill people, is like a city council deciding what drug dealer the police should kill.

W: Utter rubbish. A city council is subject to higher authority and law. The President is the highest executive legal authority. His power is limited only by Congress and the Supreme Court. He holds the ultimate prosecutorial authority. The buck stops with him.

T: We would not tolerate a local city council instructing the chief of police to kill people in the community, but for some reason its ok for the president to do it?

M: Yup, especially the military.

T: Just because that drug dealer, or car thief "might" commit a crime is no reason to put the person to death. To keep crime down, the city council is going to instruct the mayor and chief of police to kill people before they have the chance to commit the crime. How is that supposed to be ok?

M: You are just simply loony. A drug dealer or a car thief are not an imminent threat. They may be an immediate threat but one of insufficient magnitude to warrant death, as I pointed out to you above.

You have become a form of bigot. You hold an irrational belief and because you are consumed in total by that belief it colors everything you see. Once you believe that your truth is the truth, that nobody can target an American for execution, it matters not to you what anybody else matters to you. Every argument you make serves your bigoted notion that what you think is the good. You have chained your mind with delusions the run in a circle. I am right because what I believe is right and what I believe is right is right because I am right. Meanwhile, in the real world where folk have to function practically, the evidence points to the fact that Anwar al-Awlaki was a terrorist plotting to kill innocent people, a window of opportunity opened to kill him and now he is dead. I wish he could be have been arrested and tired regardless of his citizenship but I believe in reason and the doctrine of imminent threat when countless lives may be at stake and the evidence looks solid. There are times when difficult choices have to be made and many of them fall to the President. I'm glad you aren't him.
 
Moonbeam said:
T: A panel that instructs the president to kill people, is like a city council deciding what drug dealer the police should kill.

W: Utter rubbish. A city council is subject to higher authority and law. The President is the highest executive legal authority. His power is limited only by Congress and the Supreme Court. He holds the ultimate prosecutorial authority. The buck stops with him.
Click to expand...

So a city in Maryland can ask the president to assassinate a US citizen in New York, if lets say the person is importing guns into Maryland?

A couple of days ago the owner of a corner store was arrested for selling bath salts and K2 (which are illegal in Texas). Since the drugs were harming our youth, could the city ask the president to kill the store owner without a trial?

If the president has supreme authority to determine if a person lives or dies, is there a phone number we can call, describe the issue, and get permission to kill someone?

How is this supposed to work? Is there a request for death form we print out off the internet, fill out and fax to the president?
 
Texashiker said:
No, this thread is about a panel of people acting as judge and jury.

The other threads were about US citizens not getting due process.


If the US government can have a panel to decide if a US citizen lives or dies, what is stopping cities, counties or even states from enacting the same thing?

Lets say someone living in California is smuggling drugs into Texas. If Texas acted like the federal government, a panel in Texas would instruct the Texas Rangers to go to California and kill that person.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't put that beyond Rick Perry. :sneaky:

If this had happened on US soil I would be right with you being angry, seeing as this guy has committed treason and was acting as an enemy combatant in a foreign country the military solution is 100% appropriate.

Sure, we could have sent in a SEAL team to capture him. However the risk of losing men in the operation would be much higher and would have likely had the same outcome.
 
Macamus Prime said:
Yes.

Remember, no signs of broken entry. Again, according to your logic, he should have been detained and tried for trespassing - not shot (executed).
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if he was not threatening anyone, obviously.
If a crazy man enters your home without intention of stealing, do you shoot at him? no

also you must note the difference between execution and legitimate defense (with the home defense expansion).
If you shoot someone because he enters your home, it's a sort-of self defense (it's murrikan logic so you should understand it). If you execute something, it's because his crime is passable of death. But guess what, breaking and entering isn't a crime which involves the death penalty.
When you legally shoot someone, you have not judged him, you're just trying to end a threat to your own life.
 
So TexasHiker...if a US citizen goes to Afghanistan, joins the Taliban or Al Queda, and takes up arms against US troops, you don't think the troops should shoot to kill that US citizen? If he's firing on US troops, they should just try to capture him for trial?

Fuck that. While capture and trial of US citizens in such a situation would be (in a perfect world) the ideal choice, allowing the US citizen who's actively trying to kill US troops to continue his actions places those US troops in greater danger.
If that US citizen opts to continue his actions, let him pay for those actions with his life.

What's hilarious (to me) about all this Faux outrage by the righties, is that if it was a Republican in office, they'd be defending this instead of attacking it.

I'm not an Obama supporter, didn't vote for him, (for the first time since I started voting in 1972, I didn't vote for the (D) ) but it seems like it doesn't matter what Obama does, as far as those on the right are concerned, it's wrong.
Too many people care more about politics than they do the country.
 
Texashiker: So a city in Maryland can ask the president to assassinate a US citizen in New York, if lets say the person is importing guns into Maryland?

M: I suppose they can if like you they would be willing to become the laughing stock of the nation

T: A couple of days ago the owner of a corner store was arrested for selling bath salts and K2 (which are illegal in Texas). Since the drugs were harming our youth, could the city ask the president to kill the store owner without a trial?

M: See the answer above.

T: If the president has supreme authority to determine if a person lives or dies, is there a phone number we can call, describe the issue, and get permission to kill someone?

M: I don't know. I do all my own killing in these cases.

T: How is this supposed to work? Is there a request for death form we print out off the internet, fill out and fax to the president?

M: Again, I don't know. I keep all my notes in my head.
 
BoomerD said:
So TexasHiker...if a US citizen goes to Afghanistan, joins the Taliban or Al Queda, and takes up arms against US troops, you don't think the troops should shoot to kill that US citizen? If he's firing on US troops, they should just try to capture him for trial?

Fuck that. While capture and trial of US citizens in such a situation would be (in a perfect world) the ideal choice, allowing the US citizen who's actively trying to kill US troops to continue his actions places those US troops in greater danger.
If that US citizen opts to continue his actions, let him pay for those actions with his life.

What's hilarious (to me) about all this Faux outrage by the righties, is that if it was a Republican in office, they'd be defending this instead of attacking it.

I'm not an Obama supporter, didn't vote for him, (for the first time since I started voting in 1972, I didn't vote for the (D) ) but it seems like it doesn't matter what Obama does, as far as those on the right are concerned, it's wrong.
Too many people care more about politics than they do the country.
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I don't think you are being fair. I would support what the Pres did democrat or republican and I extend that to those on the other side. This is, I think for the OP, truly a matter of principle. And I think he's a libertarian, not a conservative. I think what we have here is a case of abstracted ideals becoming the enemy of the good.
 
So many retarded comments from people that don't know what they are talking about, or frankly don't care. Either way, knowing the facts is always a good thing.

1. You cannot be convicted of Treason without a trial. No trial, no treason.

2. You cannot strip someone of their citizenship for no reason.

Link

"It's interesting," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at Friday's daily briefing amid a barrage of questions on the airstrike that killed al-Awlaki in Yemen. Nuland said she asked State Department lawyers whether the government can revoke a person's citizenship based on their affiliation with a foreign terrorist group, and it turned out there's no law on the books authorizing officials to do so. "An American can be stripped of citizenship for committing an act of high treason and being convicted in a court for that. But that was obviously not the case in this case," she said. "Under U.S. law, there are seven criteria under which you can strip somebody of citizenship, and none of those applied in this case."
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3. News reports say this list is done in secret, with no accountability and no legal basis.

Link

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.
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So nowhere is any legal basis for this group to do this, let alone define a process with checks and balances. Hmm...

4. Just because you don't like terrorists, that doesn't make it legal to kill them. This should be obvious to everyone, but I guess it needs repeating. Just like child rapists or murderers or whatever type of criminal you despise, you can't just ignore the law and kill all suspected rapists. Neither can you just kill all suspected terrorists.

5. Proof? - No one has come forward with proof of guilt, let alone a trial to determine guilt. It's all secret.

The Obama administration has not made public an accounting of the classified evidence that Awlaki was operationally involved in planning terrorist attacks.

But officials acknowledged that some of the intelligence purporting to show Awlaki's hands-on role in plotting attacks was patchy.
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Patchy? It's secret, but still it's patchy? You just executed someone on patchy? Really? Kind of like that secret WMD evidence? That kind of patchy?

But again, you want to support it, either admit you don't care aobut the law, or show legal basis. Otherwise you look just like someone that wants to lynch someone, which isn't what the US is about.

And note for the record, it's funny that anyone disagreeing with this are called out as being both liberals and conservatives. LOL, can't be both.

I would bet 99% of the people that object about this could care less about the guy, but instead care about it being illegal. Similar to judges that make sure everyone gets a fair trial, because it's the law, and not based on whether or not they hate the accused. Perhaps y'all should think about that.
 
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