Obama DOJ: Government officials are above the law
April 10, 2009 – 8:03 am by JohnLiterally. This is the legal doctrine the Obama regime’s Department of Justice [sic] is invoking in its recommendation that Jewell v. National Security Agency be dismissed. Kevin Carson, in his column National Security: The Last Refuge of Scoundrels is incisive:
If the Obama Justice Department’s legal doctrine is allowed to stand, there will be absolutely no way of holding government officials civilly or criminally accountable for violating the rights of American citizens, short of a foreign power conquering the United States and putting its officials on trial. Barring a new Nuremberg trial, the officials of the United States government are above the law when it comes to “National Security.”
[...]
That claim, the bald assertion that the government can’t be called to account for violating our rights because IT’S THE GOVERNMENT, rivals Nixon’s claim that “if the President does it, it’s not illegal.” Such sheer executive chutzpah hasn’t been matched since Charles I met writs of habeas corpus with the reply that the prisoner “is being held at the King’s good pleasure.”
F. Lee Bailey once said, “Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn’t even get out of committee.” I wonder how all those Obama maniacs out there feel about the fact that their Democratic Congress, supposedly better on civil liberties than the evil neocons, would never pass the Bill of Rights today, or about the fact that if somehow Congress did pass it, Barack Obama would never sign it into law.
Hat tip: Sheldon Richman
