WASHINGTON (AP) — A former Justice Department official who helped devise the Obama administration’s legal justification for using drones to kill American terror suspects overseas won Senate approval Thursday to become a top federal judge.
David Barron was confirmed by a mostly party-line vote of 53-45. He will join the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in Boston.
Barron was acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2009 and 2010 when he authored memos explaining why the government had the constitutional authority to kill Americans in counterterrorism operations abroad, even if they were not on a battlefield.
In 2011, an unmanned U.S. drone in Yemen killed American-born Anwar al-Awlaki, who administration officials say was an al-Qaida leader. Officials acknowledge three other Americans killed by drones but say they weren’t specifically targeted.
President Barack Obama’s choice of Barron for the high-level job had drawn criticism from members of both parties. Some disagreed that the government has the power to kill Americans without a trial, while others objected to the administration’s refusal to disclose the documents explaining its legal reasoning.
Republicans also said he is too liberal.
Barron’s nomination gained steam after the administration revealed this week that it would not battle a federal appeals court order to release a censored version of one of his memos. That document has yet to be released.
Good. One of the least visible or understood accomplishment of the Obama administration is the reshaping of the courts. Which makes the 16 election so important to continue in the other progressive traditions. If only for four years, Hillary.
Good. The legal reasoning in that memo was flawless.
Opposition to the targeted strikes on al Qaeda targets is a policy question, not a legal one. That the United States government is legally authorized to strike combatants in a declared war, or to use deadly force against people who are putting together attacks on our civilians, is inarguably true.
If you want to argue that it’s a bad idea, or a bad idea in certain cases, by all means, go right ahead - but Barron wasn’t hired to write a memo about whether it was a good idea. He was directed to write a memo discussing its legality.
BS. The legal reasoning demonstrated in that memo should have gotten the author’s law degree stripped from him, not placed him on the bench. Fifth amendment of the Constitution:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger
Please explain, legally, how the president or high ranking official, has the authority to be the prosecutor, judge, jury, and order an execution with no over sight at all. It is this insane partisan ideoglogy that justifies the murder of 16 year old US citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and 9 other people by drone while he sat at a cafe in Yemen. A country we are not a war with. He had no ties at all to terrorism aside from the fact that his father was a member of al-Qaeda, a father he hadn’t spoken to in years. But someone decided he needed to die. And since there is no oversight thanks to this hack lawyer, we will never know who or why.
The legality of that memo has all of the weight of the memo written by John Yoo justifying torture. That one was so bad that Obama signed an executive order revoking all legal guidance written by John Yoo on his second day of office. Here is hoping that future presidents will have the wisdom to do the same with anything written by this guy. You really have to be wearing your partisan blinders to think letting any president unilaterally label someone an enemy of the state is a good thing. Would you have been happy if Sarah Palin had that power?
The memo neither you or joefromLowell have read?
It’s 2014. You know the answers to all of the questions you’re asking.
I know the prepared responses you’re waiting to use.
You might or might not know the standard rebuttals to those responses. If you do, you already have a set of replies that I already know. Maybe two or three rounds after that, you actually raise a meaningful point.
But probably not. It’s 2014, and people who think that it’s some kind of meaningful point to pretend not to know what the September 2001 AUMF is, so that you have to walk them through it, so they can say the thing they’ve practiced saying about the AUMF, are not people that I’m interested in having a discussion with.
I mean, seriously? “We’re not at war with Yemen?” This is not a serious argument; this is playing dumb so you can get an excuse to read from your prepared remarks.