The Commentariat -- October 11

I have a comments page up on Off Times Square on Occupy Wall Street. ...

... Helen Kennedy of the New York Daily News: "The Occupy Wall Street protesters are planning to get in the face of some of New York's richest tycoons on Tuesday. A 'Millionaires March' will visit the homes -- or, more realistically, the gleaming marble lobbies -- of five of the city's wealthiest residents. On the target list: NewsCorp CEO Rupert Murdoch, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, conservative billionaire David Koch, financier Howard Milstein and hedge fund mogul John Paulson. Between 400 and 800 marchers plan to go to their homes to present them with oversize checks to dramatize how much less they will pay when New York State's 2% tax on millionaires expires at the end of the year. 'Ninety nine percent of the residents of New York are going to suffer from this tax giveaway so the 1% who already live in absolute luxury can put more money in their pockets,' said Doug Forand, one of the march organizers." ...

... Wall Street Journal: "Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Monday that he’ll allow the Wall Street protesters to stay indefinitely, provided they abide by the law, marking his strongest statement to date on the city’s willingness to let demonstrators occupy a park in Lower Manhattan." (Also linked in Monday's Ledes.)

I, for one, am increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and the other cities across the country. And believe it or not, some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against Americans. But you sent us here to fight for you and all Americans. -- House Majority Leader Eric Cantor last week at a conservative Values Voters meeting

Tea Party, the acronym is Taxed Enough Already. People are tired of seeing ... Washington balloon and the federal government grow in every aspect of our lives. And enough is enough.... Tea Party is an organic movement. This is not some movement that started in Washington. It’s about the people. And that’s what, I think, the message from this election is about. Get the government in D.C. working for the people again and not the other way around.  I think the Tea Party has a lot to do with the energy that came out at the polls because they’re like the tip of the spear. They represent and reflect the frustration that Americans have at what’s going on in Washington. -- Eric Cantor, last year, on the Don Imus show

Translation: If you agree with me, you're an energetic, organic movement. If you disagree with me, you're a mob. Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post has the videos.

Vanity Fair photo.** Suzanna Andrews of Vanity Fair has a fine profile of Elizabeth Warren & how brutally bankers & their Congressional lackeys came down on her. And, yeah, Andrews' profile makes President Obama look like an opportunistic wuss & Tiny Tim look way meaner than Scrooge. ...

... AND here's the video Andrews cites in her article: "Elizabeth Warren Makes Timmy Geithner Squirm":

Karen Garcia: Jeffrey Immelt, the $15.2-million-a-year CEO of General Electric -- a company that paid no federal tax in 2010 & in fact was the recipient of federal corporate welfare over and above that, a company known for shipping jobs overseas, undercutting unions & paying its workers low wages -- was President Obama's choice to head up the Administration's Jobs Council. AND Jeff Immelt wants you to "root for" him & GE:

The ever-smarmy David Brooks begins his column by setting up a series of big lies about the Occupy Wall Street protesters -- they're hippies! -- then goes on to explain why the real heroes of American governance are his right-wing "Big Thinker" buddies who get down into the policy details only to extrapolate big ideas. ...

     ... We do love it when Driftglass beats up on Our Mister Brooks. who "has once chosen to use his national media platform to paint a group that he despises from head to toe with every peacenik, tree-hugging boogieman caricature that has terrified him since before he was in long pants." ...

     ... AND Paul Krugman joins Driftglass today. After explaining the deception inherent in the Tax Foundation figure that Brooks cites to make his case, Krugman writes, "This deliberate fraud — because that’s what it has to be — is an example of the reasons knowledgeable people don’t trust the Tax Foundation." (Emphasis added.) Ergo, Krugman says flat-out that his colleague Brooks is not a "knowledgeable person." Thanks to John F. for the link.

How RomneyCare Became ObamaCare. Michael Isikoff of NBC News: "Newly obtained White House records provide fresh details on how senior Obama administration officials used Mitt Romney’s landmark health-care law in Massachusetts as a model for the new federal law.... The records, gleaned from White House visitor logs..., show that senior White House officials had a dozen meetings in 2009 with three health-care advisers and experts who helped shape the health care reform law signed by Romney in 2006, when the Republican presidential candidate was governor of Massachusetts. One of those meetings, on July 20, 2009, was in the Oval Office and presided over by President Barack Obama.... [One of these experts] told NBC News he attended one meeting ... in which [Romney] forcefully insisted on including ... the 'individual mandate' ..., a controversial provision that some of his political advisers were wary about....'”

When Democracy Goes Awry. Prof. James Fishkin, in a New York Times op-ed: "... as California, the nation’s most populous state, marks [the 100th] anniversary [of the ballot initiative], the accumulated impact of direct democracy has made it virtually ungovernable.... [But there] are reforms that people support once they really think through their implications.... If the ballot initiative process is to survive for another century, it must take into account the considered judgments of voters coming together to deliberate hard choices and not just cast a vote based on sound bites. If this succeeds it will help bring California much closer to the ideal that voters were striving for 100 years ago: legislation genuinely initiated by the people."

Right Wing World

It would be the biggest tax shift from the wealthy to the middle-class in the history of taxation, ever, anywhere, and it would bankrupt the country. -- Michael Ettlinger, an economist with the Center for American Progress on Herman Cain's "999" tax plan ...

... CW: as Herman Cain (or Herbert/Herb Cain, as he is known to Sarah Palin [video here]) surges in the polls, it's a good idea to see what he stands for. While some media outlets -- e.g., the Washington Post, give him a pass on his tax plan, we should not. Pat Garofalo of Think Progress crunched the numbers last week, and found that Cain's plan would create the largest deficit since World War II, but would increase taxes on most Americans:

... someone in the bottom quintile of earners — who currently pays about 2 percent of his or her income in federal taxes — would pay about 18 percent under Cain’s plan (9 percent on every dollar they make, plus 9 percent on every dollar they spent, which would likely be close to all of them). A middle-class individual would see his or her taxes go from about 14 percent to about 18 percent. But someone in the richest one percent of Americans would see his or her tax rate fall from about 28 percent to about 11 percent. ...

... Bruce Bartlett of the New York Times delves as deeply into Cain's 999 tax plan as one can go given Cain's lack of specificity. Read Bartlett (whose analysis is very understandable) & gasp -- again and again. Bartlett concludes:

At a minimum, the Cain plan is a distributional monstrosity. The poor would pay more while the rich would have their taxes cut, with no guarantee that economic growth will increase and good reason to believe that the budget deficit will increase. Even allowing for the poorly thought through promises routinely made on the campaign trail, Mr. Cain’s tax plan stands out as exceptionally ill conceived. ...

... BTW -- Andy Kroll of Mother Jones (May 2011): "... scrubbed from Cain's official story is his long tenure as a director at a Midwest energy corporation named Aquila that, like the infamous Enron Corporation, recklessly dove into the wild west of energy trading and speculatio n— and ultimately screwed its employees out of tens of millions of dollars.... Cain served on the board of directors throughout Aquila's ill-fated trading misadventure and the subsequent collapse of the company's retirement fund. In fact, he chaired the board's compensation committee, which ... push[ed] to get employees to invest more and more in Aquila stock.... Cain also saw fit to dole out $30 million in bonuses, not including stock options, to the top five execs at Aquila in 2002, with the company's stock plummeting."

Suzy Khimm of the Washington Post: "Conservative activists have created a Tumblr called 'We are the 53 percent' that’s meant to be a counterpunch to the viral 'We are the 99 percent' site that’s become a prominent symbol for the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Tumblr is supposed to represent the 53 percent of Americans who pay federal income taxes, and its assumption is that the Wall Street protesters are part of the 46 percent of the country who don’t. 'We are the 53 percent' was originally the brainchild of Erick Erickson [a notorious right-wing blogger].... But there is some tension between the site’s critique and conservative tax policy. Part of the reason that over 40 percent of Americans don’t pay taxes is because of the continual push to lower them — a cause that conservatives have championed."

AND Hunter Walker of the New York Observer: Hank Williams, Jr., is fighting back against the forces of evil who dissed him for comparing President Obama to Hitler in a new song which [CW: I guess] is titled "I'll Keep My Shit." [Walker is too polite to report the full title.]

News Ledes

New York Times: "President Obama’s chief of staff, William M. Daley, will step down at the end of the president’s current term in January 2013, Mr. Daley told a Chicago television station. Mr. Daley, who has come under criticism for his handling of relations with lawmakers, said he was confident Mr. Obama would win re-election next year, but Mr. Daley said he would not stay on for a second term."

AP: "United against Barack Obama, Senate Republicans voted Tuesday night to kill the jobs package the president had spent weeks campaigning for across the country, a stinging loss at the hands of lawmakers opposed to stimulus-style spending and a tax increase on the very wealthy. Forty-six Republicans joined with two Democrats to filibuster the $447 billion plan. Fifty Democrats had voted for it, but the vote was not final. The roll call was kept open to allow Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. to vote. The likely 51-48 eventual tally would be far short of the 60 votes needed to keep the bill alive in the 100-member Senate." ...

     ... The Hill Update: "President Obama blasted Senate Republicans for blocking his jobs bill Tuesday night, saying the American people 'won't take 'no' for an answer.' The president said in a statement that his administration will work with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to get votes on the individual components of the bill 'as soon as possible.'"

New York Times: "Five health and environmental groups sued the Obama administration on Tuesday over its rejection of a proposed stricter new standard for ozone pollution, saying the decision was driven by politics and ignored public health concerns."

New York Times: "... the Senate passed a bill that would require the Treasury Department to order the Commerce Department to impose tough tariffs on certain Chinese goods in the event of a finding by the Treasury that China was improperly valuing its currency to gain an economic advantage. The measure passed 63 to 35, with 16 Republican votes, an unusual dynamic in the Democrat-controlled Senate. It enjoyed rare support from members of both parties despite the strong disapproval of Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader...."

New York Times: "Federal authorities foiled a plot by men linked to the Iranian government to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States and to bomb a Saudi embassy, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a news conference on Tuesday."

New York Times: "Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey endorsed Mitt Romney’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday afternoon by praising his business and government experience, declaring, 'Mitt Romney is the man we need to lead America.'” With video. CW: okay, so now I'm think maybe Christie isn't running. ...

     ... Update: here's a more, um, expansive Times story.

CNN: "A group of union-backed organizations joined the loosely defined Occupy Wall Street movement again Tuesday, leaving behind the confines of New York's financial district for the posh neighborhoods that dot Manhattan's Upper East Side, according to multiple group representatives.... The union-organized march, meanwhile, took protesters past the homes of well-to-do residents like billionaire David Koch, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon." ...

... New York Daily News: "The attorney for an 'Occupy Wall Street' protester zapped by police pepper spray cited a double standard Tuesday in demanding the arrest of her uniformed assailant.

Republican candidates for president will debate in New Hampshire at 8:00 pm ET. It will air on Bloomberg TV or you can watch a livestream at Bloomberg.com The page linked has a TV channel-finder for Bloomberg.

AP: "President Barack Obama's jobs bill, facing a critical test in the Senate, appears likely to fail because Republicans oppose its spending components and its tax surcharge on millionaires." ...

... CNN: As the Senate prepares to vote on President Obama's jobs bill, the Obama campaign released a memo by senior strategist David Axelrod that seems designed to give wavering senators reason to vote for the bill: it makes the case that 'there is no Republican alternative that would create jobs now.'"

Reuters: "Apple Inc co-founder Steve Jobs died of respiratory arrest caused by a pancreatic tumor, according to the death certificate."

Reuters: "One-time hedge fund tycoon Raj Rajaratnam may get the longest prison sentence to date for insider trading, sending a harsh warning to anyone else who considers becoming a master of trading on confidential information. Prosecutors are seeking one of the longest sentences ever for an insider-trading defendant, arguing that the 54-year-old Galleon Group founder is "the modern face" of illegal stock trading. The sentencing, which had been delayed, is set for Thursday."

The Commentariat -- October 10

Oops, I forgot, till a friend reminded me that today is Columbus Day.

Christopher Columbus Meets Some Native Americans. Or, as another friend writes, "Happy Anniversary of the Day Columbus First Spread Syphilis to the Arawaks."... So here's to Saint Brendan, an Irish monk who -- with his crew -- may have been the first Europeans to travel west to North America in the 6th century C.E.:

Also known as Brandan and Borodon, Brendan was born about 484 A.D. near Tralee in County Kerry. He ... sailed around northwest Europe spreading the Christian faith and founding monasteries — the largest at Clonfert, County Galway.... He died at the age of 93 and he was buried at the monastery in 577 A.D.

Brendan and his brothers figure prominently in Brendan's Voyage, a tale of monks travelling the high seas of the Atlantic, evangelizing to the islands, and possibly reaching the Americas in the 6th century. At one point they stop on a small island, celebrate Easter Mass, light a fire -- and then discover the island is an enormous whale!

Maps of Columbus’ time often included an island called St. Brendan’s Isle that was placed in the western Atlantic ocean. Map makers of the time had no idea of its exact position.... It was mentioned in a Latin text dating from the ninth century called Navigatio Santi Brendani Abatis (Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot). It described the voyage as having taken place in the sixth century.... It was an important part of folklore in medieval Europe and may have influenced Columbus.

     ... As the linked account details, Brendan's claims may not be as far-fetched as they at first seem.

The government is going broke, and who can trust the stock market? There’s not much left to rely on.... [President Obama is] the greatest disappointment of my life — and I’ve been divorced twice.... I'm 67. -- Brenda Barnes, an Occupy Wall Street protester from Santa Monica, California

... This Just in. Alexander Burns of Politico: "Long-shot presidential candidate Buddy Roemer will take his support for Occupy Wall Street to the next level Tuesday when he joins a demonstration in New York. Roemer has been the lone Republican to praise Occupy Wall Street as an expression of public anger against what he calls a 'government ... controlled by special interest money.'" ...

... Jesse LaGreca of Occupy Wall Street & Daily Kos appears on ABC News' "This Week." Luckily, we have Peggy Noonan to tell the kids what to do & George Will to sneer:

... Paul Krugman on the One Percenters' reactions to the 99 Percenters: "... wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.... So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth." ...

... Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) in Nation of Change: "... the country's six largest financial institutions (Bank of America, CitiGroup, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs) now have amassed assets equal to more than 60% of our gross domestic product.... We should break up the giant financial institutions.... Wall Street reform also must address the powerful and secretive Federal Reserve.... Under emergency provisions already in law, the Fed has the authority to provide low-interest loans to small businesses that are starving for capital so that they can create the millions of jobs our economy needs. It should do so. The Fed also has authority to make credit card issuers stop bilking consumers with sky-high fees and interest rates of 30% or more." ...

... Bernie Becker of The Hill: "Both [Herman] Cain and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich ... blamed the [Occupy Wall Street] protests on 'class warfare' fomented by Obama." With video, if you can stand to watch two old farts telling lies. ...

... Blue Texan of Firedoglake: "One of the best byproducts of the Occupy Wall Street protests is that they’ve made Republicans show their true colors. America is watching as they cast off the faux right-wing populism of the Teabaggers — which was always a pose — and unabashedly embrace the monied oligarchy." ...

... Charlie Grapski of Firedoglake: immediately after wire services published stories of a scuffle and pepper-spray incident that ultimately led to a shutdown of Washington, D.C.'s National Air & Space Museum, Patrick Howley, an assistant editor of the right-wing American Spectator admitted boasted "that he had consciously infiltrated the group on Friday with the intent to discredit the movement." Howley describes the actual protesters as "lack[ing] the nerve to confront authority. From estimates within the protest, only ten people were pepper-sprayed, and as far as I could tell I was the only one who got inside.” As Grapski writes,

As a result of Howley’s activities a large number of people were subjected to pepper-spray attacks including journalists and tourists who had nothing to do with the protest. Given the negative light that the press is attempting to spin this incident with regard to the ongoing occupations, from Wall Street and D.C. and now spreading to Main Streets across the country, the presence and admitted activities of this self-proclaimed agent provacateur should be brought to the attention of federal law enforcement officials. ...

      ... Ali Gharib of Think Progress: "The American Spectator scrubbed the original piece [by Howley] and reposted it with the words 'in order to mock and undermine in the pages of The American Spectator' removed from a sentence where Howley described why he 'had infiltrated [the protests] the day before.'” ...

     ... Here's Suzy Khimm's lede in the Washington Post: "A conservative journalist has admitted to infiltrating the group of protesters who clashed with security at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum on Saturday — and he openly claims to have instigated the events that prompted the museum to close." ...

     ... Hey, It's What They Do. Phoenix Woman of Firedoglake: "According to a 2010 report from the National Lawyers Guild that examined [the Battle for Seattle in 1999, the RNC protests of 2008, and the G-20 protests of 2009], most if not all of the violence therein was committed by either the cops or people working against or otherwise hostile to the goals of the protesters."

Robert Pear of the New York Times: "In a grim sign of the enduring nature of the economic slump, household income declined more in the two years after the recession ended than it did during the recession itself, new research has found."

Bill Keller has a fine essay on the Tea Party and their most likely standard-bearer, Rick Perry. Here's a sample, but read the whole column:

Perry brings to the campaign, besides great posture and polished good looks, an economic record that looks like a vindication of Tea Party dogma, never mind that it was made possible by a quarter of America’s known oil reserves, a lot of low-wage immigrants, a reluctance to waste government money on frills like education and health care, and a tax and regulatory environment out of the Wild West....

To this Perry adds a damn-the-pointy-heads denialism — global warming is a hoax, evolution is just “a theory that’s out there” — as well as a wink to the evangelicals, a nod to the executioner, and an ardent defense of personal liberties for those who are heterosexual and don’t need an abortion. He may not believe in evolution, but his survival-of-the-fittest view of society is pretty Darwinian.

New York Times Editors: "It has been a record year for new legislation designed to make it harder for Democrats to vote — 19 laws and two executive actions in 14 states dominated by Republicans, according to a new study by the Brennan Center for Justice. As a result, more than five million eligible voters will have a harder time participating in the 2012 election. Of course the Republicans passing these laws never acknowledge their real purpose, which is to turn away from the polls people who are more likely to vote Democratic, particularly the young, the poor, the elderly and minorities.

William Broad & Scott Shane of the New York Times: "A decade after wisps of anthrax sent through the mail killed 5 people, sickened 17 others and terrorized the nation, biologists and chemists still disagree on whether federal investigators got the right man and whether the F.B.I.’s long inquiry brushed aside important clues.... The new paper raises the prospect — for the first time in a serious scientific forum — that the Army biodefense expert identified by the F.B.I. as the perpetrator, Bruce E. Ivins, had help in obtaining his germ weapons or conceivably was innocent of the crime.... Dr. Ivins, an Army anthrax specialist who worked at Fort Detrick, Md...., killed himself in 2008 as prosecutors prepared to charge him."

Kevin Soh & Aileen Wang of Reuters: "China's local governments have piled up a mountain of bad debt, some of it to finance bridges to nowhere and other white elephant projects, which now threatens to constrict growth at a time when the global economy is sputtering. It is adding to other systemic risks in China, including a sharp downturn in the property market and a rapid rise in problematic loans." ...

... David Barboza of the New York Times: "Under an economic system that favors state-run banks and companies over wage earners, the government keeps the interest rate on savings accounts so artificially low that it cannot keep pace with China’s rising inflation.... Economists say this nation’s decade of remarkable economic growth ... has to a great extent been underwritten by the household savings — not the spending — of the country’s 1.3 billion people. This system, which some experts refer to as state capitalism, depends on the transfer of wealth from Chinese households to state-run banks, government-backed corporations and the affluent few who are well enough connected to benefit from the arrangement. Meanwhile, striving middle-class families ... are unable to enjoy the full fruits of China’s economic miracle." Hmm. Why does this sound so familiar?

CW: I have no way to verify this figure, & one should bear in mind that during these Republican Administrations, Democrats often controlled Congress, which holds the purse strings even if the president signs the checks. Thanks to Doug R. for the link:

Right Wing World

Politics of the Absurd. David Catanese of Politico: "Fifteen minutes was not long enough to satisfy Joe 'The Plumber's' appetite for political glory. Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher has now filed for Congress to run in Ohio's 9th District.... 'The Plumber' could benefit from a Democratic primary face-off between [Rep. Marcy] Kaptur, [the Democrat who currently holds the seat,] and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who may end up running against each other because of the loss of two congressional seats in Ohio following redistricting."

The Plutocrats Divide? Ken Vogel of Politico: "Karl Rove’s team and the Koch brothers’ operatives quietly coordinated millions of dollars in political spending in 2010, but that alliance, which has flown largely under the radar, is showing signs of fraying. And with each network planning to dwarf its 2010 effort, Republicans worry that the emerging rivalry between the two deepest-pocketed camps in the conservative movement could undercut their party’s chances of taking the Senate and White House in 2012."

As if to hammer down Krugman's point (see link above), E. J. Dionne writes that when Democratic senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren made "a proper case for liberalism," Dionne's WashPo colleague & leading conservative pundit George Will went into full attack mode. Devoting a whole column to Warren's thesis that "there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own," Will "demonstrates his debating skills by first accusing Warren of being 'a pyromaniac in a field of straw men,' and then by conceding the one and only point that Warren actually made.... On the core point about the social contract, George Will and Elizabeth Warren are in full, if awkward, agreement."

Captain of the Clueless Club. CW: one of the many reasons I never cite Robert Samuelson, the Washington Post economics op-ed columnist, even when he might be correct about something: here he defends the rich against unfair attacks by people who "resent and envy" them.

Lindsey Boerma of CBS News: "Rep. Ron Paul scored a decisive victory Saturday in a mock presidential election at the Values Voter Summit, trouncing fellow Texan, Gov. Rick Perry, but an organizer of the straw poll suggested ballot-stuffing may have skewed the results.... The victory for the longtime congressman and three-time presidential contender over his Republican rivals in the presidential contest was ... surprising because Paul's principled libertarianism sometimes puts him at odds with the views of social conservatives on issues such as gay marriage and drug laws." CW: somehow I don't think this means Values Voters are suddenly in favor of free & fair elections. See New York Times editorial linked above.

Rick Perry attacks RomneyCare:

News Ledes

Wall Street Journal: "Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Monday that he’ll allow the Wall Street protesters to stay indefinitely, provided they abide by the law, marking his strongest statement to date on the city’s willingness to let demonstrators occupy a park in Lower Manhattan."

New York Times: "Thomas J. Sargent and Christopher A. Sims, two Americans, won the Nobel economics prize on Monday “for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said."

AP: "Clashes over the weekend between Syrian soldiers and army defectors and a shooting at a funeral have killed at least 17 members of the military and 14 civilians, the latest sign of the militarization of the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime, a human rights group said Monday."

Washington Post: "The trial of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the al-Qaeda suspect who allegedly tried to bring down a Northwest Airlines plane with a bomb hidden in his underwear in December 2009, will open Tuesday in Detroit amid some uncertainty about whether the Nigerian, who is representing himself, will offer a vigorous defense or attempt to use the courtroom as a political stage."

The Killing of Anwar al-Awlaki

I've posted a comments page on Off Times Square on the Killing of Anwar al-Awlaki.

A reader wrote today to ask my opinion on the Administration's legal justification for the targeting & killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen. Charlie Savage of the New York Times reported yesterday on "a secret legal memorandum" that concluded the killing of Awlaki would "be lawful if it were not feasible to take him alive." I linked the story yesterday; it's here. Here is a slightly edited version of my answer to the reader. Also, do read Glenn Greenwald, linked below.

There are several ways to look at this issue, but I think it’s essential to try to separate the moral/ethical implications from the legal “justification.”

Lawyers can justify almost any action. It’s what they’re paid to do. On this, see Glenn Greenwald, who lays out at some length why the “justification” to kill Awlaki was bogus. But in reading Greenwald, it’s also a good idea to bear in mind that Greenwald’s position is a pretty easy one to make. Greenwald -- who is a lawyer -- says you can’t kill a U.S. citizen without due process because the Constitution (and some other legal principles) says you can’t. For Greenwald, that’s the end of the story. As I said, an easy call.

Also, as Greenwald notes, months before the date of the “justification” memo, the media were reporting that there was a kill order on Awlaki. I don’t know if the media got that right, but if they did, then the “justification” followed the decision to kill him. The lawyers, just as usually happens in a trial, were making their case after the fact.

Another thing to bear in mind, & something Greenwald also points out, is that we don’t really know what the 50-page memo said. Greenwald implies Savage had only one source; I think Savage makes clear he had more than one source. But Greenwald’s point is well-taken – all we get from Savage’s report is the Administration’s gloss on the memo. Savage’s sources are telling him what they want him to hear. A 50-page memo obviously contains some nuance, and the Administration has not released the nuance. It’s secret. So we only know what officials in the Obama Administration want us to know.

Another point: Savage reports that the memo does not address the quality or quantity of evidence against Awlaki. The implication then is that the memo reads, “If you have evidence that Awlaki has done all this bad stuff & that he cannot reasonably be captured & is unwilling to turn himself over to U.S. authorities, then you can kill him for these reasons: blah blah blah.” That means to actually justify the killing of Awlaki, the Administration would have to have acquired some pretty good “slam dunk” evidence against him. Presumably, the bulk of whatever evidence the Administration had came from the CIA. And you know how slam-dunky the CIA has been.

I respect the civil libertarian POV that the U.S. just can’t go around killing American citizens if they have not received due process in accordance with the Constitution & U.S. laws.

BUT. I think there are exceptions.

First, on the legal issue, something Greenwald doesn’t mention -- and he wouldn’t because it undermines his argument -- this is a case of the Constitution being in conflict with itself. As Justice David Souter outlined in his Harvard commencement address last year, "The explicit terms of the Constitution ... can create a conflict of approved values, and the explicit terms of the Constitution do not resolve that conflict when it arises.” (The text is here & is worth reading. I've appended the video of Souter's speech below.) The President takes an oath to uphold the Constitution, & one of his duties as “Commander in Chief of the Army & the Navy” (Article II) is spelled out in the preamble: to “provide for the common defence” of the nation. I don’t think there’s any question but that providing for the common defense may occasionally put a Commander in Chief in conflict with the Bill of Rights or with other provisions of the Constitution. (Ask Abe Lincoln about suspending habeas corpus & about closing down newspapers that opposed the war!) You might argue that Obama should have marched his case over to the Supremes for their input on the constitutionality of targeting Awlaki, but I’m not sure I’d want to leave the defense of the nation to Nino Scalia.

As a moral issue -- as opposed to a legal one -- I don’t think it matters a whit what nationality Awlaki was. If I murdered my neighbor who is Brazilian, I’m just as guilty of murder as if I had murdered his wife who is American. I don’t get some moral free pass because the guy “isn’t even an American!” Murder is murder.

At the same time, there are “legal” killings that are immoral. I would argue, for instance, that the execution of Troy Davis – though entirely legal – was immoral. After his trial, enough reasonable doubt surfaced to suggest that, if we had a system that allowed a do-over (as does, say, Italy), there was clearly enough evidence to raise reasonable doubt of Davis’s guilt. I have no idea if Davis was or was not guilty of murder. I do have an idea that he could not be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

As I argued in a comment in Off Times Square, not all Americans get due process. Nearly once a week, you hear of some American (on American soil) who is suspected of a heinous crime – usually but not always murder – being killed by police. Unless there is some special circumstance – like racism – usually not much of a fuss is raised about the shooting of the suspect. So quite a few Americans suspected of crimes do not get anything approaching due process. They just get shot dead.

Based on what I’ve read in the media, I think it’s pretty certain that Awlaki fomented violence against Americans. Whether he was also involved in planning & carrying out violence against Americans, I don’t know. I have only the government’s claim on that.

I also know that Awlaki did not turn himself over to U.S. authorities. Given the way the U.S. has treated enemy combatants, & given his views, this is hardly surprising. But it was an option he had, if not such a great one. He chose not to surrender.

He also put himself in a situation in which he made his capture more than a little difficult.

As I mentioned earlier, the media widely reported that there was a kill order out on Awlaki. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that Awlaki knew he was a target and had time to think about how to deal with that.

So I equate Awlaki with the local murder suspect who knows the police are after him but who resists arrest & gets shot dead. The authorities may or may not have good evidence – evidence that would stand up in court – against Awlaki & the local suspect. But Awlaki & the suspect made essentially the same choice. They decided not to surrender; that is, not to have their days in court.

Therefore, I think that if the evidence against Awlaki was accurate – or even if the Administration merely believed the evidence that he was planning terrorist attacks against Americans – then his killing was morally justified. Tying a legal justification to his killing is a nicety, but it doesn’t carry a great deal of weight with me.

What I think civil libertarians like Greenwald fail to take into account is that Awlaki, too, was an actor in this drama, not just a bystander. He made decisions that put him in danger of being targeted and killed. These decisions were not just the ones he made after he was targeted – they include his decision to advocate for, and probably participate in, violence against Americans. There is no way to know whether the killing of Awlaki saved American lives or if his killing will instead only embolden anti-American sentiments. But I do think the Administration made a reasonable call, given what it knew. Time will tell. Or rather, may tell.

As I said, my position – and for that matter, the President’s -- is harder to make than Greenwald’s. Lines in the sand are easy to draw. Nuance is not so neat. And because it’s so messy, it’s easy to err or one side or the other. But sometimes it’s a mistake to be so sure of yourself. I think Greenwald makes that mistake quite often. There’s a good chance this is one of those times.

Here's Souter on the Constitution. He begins speaking at about 4:00 minutes in: