Herbert W. Titus & William J. Olson

Exercising a power that no prior president ever thought he possessed — a power that no prior president is known to have exercised — President Obama admitted that he ordered the execution of American citizens, not on a battlefield, based on his belief that they were involved in terrorist activities. It is known that at least three U.S. citizens, including a 16-year old boy, were killed on the president's order in drone strikes in Yemen in 2011.

As the worldwide drone program ramps up, there have been increasing calls for the president to reveal the basis for his claimed authority. Only a few weeks ago, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon denied both the ACLU's and New York Times' requests under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain any and all legal documents prepared in support of the president's claim of unilateral powers. While Judge McMahon was concerned that the documents "implicate serious issues about the limits on the power of the Executive Branch under the Constitution and laws of the United States, and about whether we are indeed a nation of laws not of men," she felt constrained by precedent to withhold them. Now, a bipartisan group of 11 senators has written a letter to president Obama asking for "any and all legal opinions" that describe the basis for his claimed authority to "deliberately kill American citizens."

However, not until the Senate began gathering information for hearings on John Brennan's confirmation as CIA director has public attention finally been focused on this remarkable presidential usurpation of power.

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Andrew P. Napolitano

After stonewalling for more than a year federal judges and ordinary citizens who sought the revelation of its secret legal research justifying the presidential use of drones to kill persons overseas – even Americans – claiming the research was so sensitive and so secret that it could not be revealed without serious consequences, the government sent a summary of its legal memos to an NBC newsroom earlier this week.

This revelation will come as a great surprise, and not a little annoyance, to U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon, who heard many hours of oral argument during which the government predicted gloom and doom if its legal research were subjected to public scrutiny. She very reluctantly agreed with the feds, but told them she felt caught in "a veritable Catch-22," because the feds have created "a thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret."

She was writing about President Obama killing Americans and refusing to divulge the legal basis for claiming the right to do so. Now we know that basis.

The undated and unsigned 16-page memo leaked to NBC refers to itself as a Department of Justice white paper. Its logic is flawed, its premises are bereft of any appreciation for the values of the Declaration of Independence and the supremacy of the Constitution, and its rationale could be used to justify any breaking of any law by any "informed, high-level official of the U.S. government."

The quoted phrase is extracted from the memo, which claims that the law reposes into the hands of any unnamed "high-level official," not necessarily the president, the lawful power to decide when to suspend constitutional protections guaranteed to all persons and kill them without any due process whatsoever. This is the power claimed by kings and tyrants. It is the power most repugnant to American values. It is the power we have arguably fought countless wars to prevent from arriving here. Now, under Obama, it is here.

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Wayne Madsen

President Obama ran for president in 2008 on a promise of closing down the U.S. prisoner detention center at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Recently, Obama went back on his word by ordering closed down the State Department office in charge of closing down the detention camps. On January 22, 2009, two days after Obama was sworn in as president, he issued an Executive Order that stated; «The detention facilities at Guantánamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.» Four years later, the Guantánamo detention centers remain open…

Shortly after Obama was sworn in for his second term, the State Department announced the special envoy for closing Guantánamo, Daniel Fried, was being reassigned and would not be replaced. Adding insult to injury, the Obama administration named Fried as the head of U.S. sanctions policy, which includes the over five decade long economic blockade of Cuba.

Obama clearly has other plans for Guantánamo that have nothing to do with closing the book on a shameful American legacy of maintaining a tropical gulag in the Caribbean Sea.

The Obama administration clearly foresees as political change coming to Cuba during his second term. Just as the United States used its bases in West Germany and West Berlin to facilitate NATO’s absorption of East Germany and the other Eastern European nations, it sees Guantánamo as a salient within Cuba to transition the socialist island nation back into an American «banana republic», akin to Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Guatemala. It is for such a reason that the United States has remained in illegal possession of Guantánamo Bay more than a decade after its 99-year lease expired. For the United States, Guantánamo or «Gitmo» as it is known to U.S. military personnel, is a forward base for U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean and, more widely, in Latin America.

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