Obama's New Rule: You've Got Rights But You Can't Enforce Them

Dear Mr. President,

Yesterday in Federal District Court in Washington, Judge Rosemary Collyer heard a government request to dismiss a suit charging violation of the constitutional rights of Anwar and Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, all American citizens and all killed in drone strikes in Yemen in 2011 without charges, evidence or a trial. The DoJ lawyer, Brian Hauck, argued that the Executive “could kill American citizens it designated as dangerous, with no role for courts to review the decision.” (Today’s NYT, “Judge Challenges White House Claims on Authority in Drone Killings” p. A8) Judge Collyer asked if the government believed “that a U.S. citizen targeted by the United States in a foreign country has no constitutional rights… Hauck acknowledged that Americans targeted overseas do have rights, but he said they could not be enforced in court either before or after the Americans were killed.” Whoa! We have rights, we just can’t enforce them? Astounding! This argument could apply to all constitutional right—we have them but we can’t enforce them. Further, he argued, “Judges… have neither the expertise nor the tools necessary to assess the danger posed by terrorists, the feasibility of capturing them or when and how they should be killed” and besides, he said, targeted assassinations have adequate oversight and checks within the Executive. That’s when Judge Collyer, a G.W. appointee and FISA court judge got testy: “No, no, no… The executive is not an effective check on the executive.” This exchange illustrates how far we’ve strayed from the rule of law, how laws and justice have been distorted beyond recognition, where government is no longer accountable to anyone, where plaintiffs have “no standing” and where the Judiciary is dismissed as incapable of judging the Executive. In your warped vision of America, no one has a right to privacy, whistleblowers are traitors, assassins are heroes, the law is whatever you say it is and every government act is necessary for national security. The President of the United States is neither above the law nor is he or she, The Law. The Constitution is the basic law of the land, a document you took a sacred oath—twice—to uphold. You violated that oath—and the Constitution—in the most blatant and profound ways imaginable. We are no longer a democracy nor are we truly free. We have become a rogue state wreaking violence, terror and injustice on the world. You should be stripped of your Nobel Peace Prize and impeached.