Glenn Greenwald reports on the U.S. Government’s continuing efforts to find and kill, without any “due process,” trial, or the like, a non-combatant U.S. Citizen living abroad. I recommend this article, and quote from it below.

The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights are attempting to represent this US Citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, in our Federal Courts, in order to challenge the government’s constitutional authority to order him killed without trial.

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But:

[R]egulations promulgated several years ago by the Treasury Department prohibit U.S. persons from engaging in any transactions with individuals labeled by the Government as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist,” and those regulations specifically bar lawyers from providing legal services to such individuals without a special “license” from the Treasury Department specifically allowing such representation.

On July 16 — roughly two weeks after Awlaki’s father retained the ACLU and CCR to file suit — the Treasury Department slapped that label on Awlaki [making] it a criminal offense for those organizations to file suit on behalf of Awlaki or otherwise provide legal representation to him without express permission from the U.S. Government.

The ACLU/CCR applied to the Treasury Department for the license, begging for a quick response and stressing the time-urgency involved in the case of a man marked for death.

The Treasury Department did not respond to the request.

So the ACLU/CCR has sued Treasury in Federal Court asking the judge to enjoin the government from playing gatekeeper for a U.S. Citizen’s representation by attorneys.  Greenwald writes:

It’s rather amazing that the Federal Government asserts the right to require U.S. citizens and American lawyers to obtain government permission before entering into an attorney-client relationship — all because these [Treasury Department] officials decided on their own, with no process, to call the citizen a “Global Terrorist.” It’s difficult to imagine a more blatantly unconstitutional power than that.

It seems like we owe the guy a trial. He isn’t a military commander, or fighting our troops on a battlefield. If he’s preaching something that’s hostile to U.S. policy, and we can legally extradite him and prove to a jury that what he’s doing is illegal, then the judge can give him an appropriate sentence. This is a U.S. Citizen we’re talking about. That has to mean something. Our Constitution certainly does not allow the Executive Branch to unilaterally place death sentences on U.S. Citizens. That our government is fighting the ability of a citizen’s lawyers to even make that argument in court is even more preposterous.

“Those who give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Security, deserve neither Liberty nor Security.” — Benjamin Franklin

What do you think?

B