Excerpt, minor editing for Today’s Insight News by Carolyn Bennett
None shall make or enforce law abridging privileges or immunities
of citizens of the United States.
None shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law.
None shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the
equal protection of the laws.
Another administration breaches the Constitution of the United States and international laws. Representative Dennis J. Kucinich calls the Executive Branch to “justify” State acts of murder.
Writing last week to the U.S. Attorney General, Kucinich wrote, “Due process of law is a fundamental principle in our Constitutional structure.
Even the most superficial reading of Article XIV makes it clear that extrajudicial killings of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government or its agents are by definition outside the law. Yet under the policy cited in The Washington Post, when citizens are unilaterally deemed a threat to our national security, their right to present a defense is summarily and anonymously stripped from them ─ the government becomes policeman, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner all in one. This suspension of basic constitutional protections for U.S. citizens puts in jeopardy our Constitution and the rule of law. …
[The] revelation that Blackwater [later named Xe Services] is intimately involved with the targeted assassination program run by the CIA and JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command, a component command of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM)] in Pakistan leads me to the concern that there is a possibility of their involvement in targeted assassinations elsewhere. … The company’s founder, Erik Prince, has confirmed Blackwater’s participation in covert, targeted assassination programs run by the CIA and JSOC. It seems [therefore] that since private, U.S.-based security contractors are intimately involved in the planning of targeted assassinations, the door of murder-for-hire has been opened wide.
“Blackwater has already been subject to an investigation of wholesale murder in Iraq. Instead of being debarred from federal contracts, the Pentagon and the CIA have now seen fit to give Blackwater operatives the power over life and death. The use of private security companies in operations that have virtually no transparency, accountability or oversight raises serious legal questions, particularly when the outcomes of such programs constitute possible violations of international law and violations of the U.S. Constitution. …
“The government has the right and the obligation to protect the citizens of this country. However, I reject the notion that we can accomplish this goal only by violating international law and trampling on the Constitution. Protecting the constitutional rights of some citizens should not require revoking the constitutional rights of other citizens.…”
Sources and notes
Member of the House of Representatives of the United States Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio] was writing [letter excerpted] February 4, 2010, to the Attorney General of the United States, Eric H. Holder, Jr.
The XIV Article/Amendment of the Constitution of the United States ratified July 9, 1868, reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Dennis J. Kucinich rose from Cleveland’s City Council (1970-75) to its Mayor (1977, the youngest person ever elected to lead a major U.S. city) and City Council (1981-82) to Clerk of Courts for the Cleveland Municipal Court (1976-77) to Ohio State Senator (1994-96) to United States House of Representatives (1997-present). Representative Kucinich has remained one of America’s stalwart Constitutional and human rights progressives. In the U.S. Congress, Kucinich chairs the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee; and is a member of the Education and Labor Committee. In his tireless advocacy for worker rights, civil rights, and human rights, Representative Kucinich has authored and co-sponsored legislation to create a national health care system, preserve Social Security, lower the costs of prescription drugs, provide economic development through infrastructure improvements, abolish the death penalty, provide universal prekindergarten to all 3, 4, and 5 year olds, create a Department of Peace, regulate genetically engineered foods, repeal the USA PATRIOT Act, and provide tax relief to working class families.
http://kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=169615
http://kucinich.house.gov/UploadedFiles/Ltr._to_Holder_Targeted_Assassinations_02-04-2010.pdf
http://kucinich.house.gov/Biography/
“Obama Administration: U.S. Forces Can Assassinate Americans Believed to Be Involved in Terrorist Activity,” Democracy Now, February 9, 2010. Guests Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who last week he wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder requesting an explanation of the Obama administration’s legal basis for the extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizens; Glenn Greenwald, constitutional law attorney and political and legal blogger for Salon.com, who wrote ‘Presidential Assassinations of U.S. Citizens’ http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/9/obama_administration_us_forces_can_assassinate
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