Magna Carta -- 1215. We survived almost 900 years with the rights guaranteed by the Magna Carta challenged and transgressed now and then but always the hallmark of English law. And now, here we are having to fight once again for the simple rights of a free person: the rights to notice and to be heard, the right to a jury of one's peers and, hopefully, a judge who is fair.
No president should have the right to kill someone without notice and the right to be heard, without a fair trial.
Those living or fighting in a war zone have at least some notice if no right to be heard. But these drones are being used in a way that completely violates this basic tenet of a free society.
Don't even use the word free if you don't have an inalienable right to a trial -- to notice and to be heard -- because if you don't have those rights, you are not free.
More about the Magna Carta.
The 1215 charter required King John of England to proclaim certain liberties and accept that his will was not arbitrary—for example by explicitly accepting that no "freeman" (in the sense of non-serf) could be punished except through the law of the land, a right that still exists.
Magna Carta was the first document forced onto a King of England by a group of his subjects, the feudal barons, in an attempt to limit his powers by law and protect their privileges. It was preceded and directly influenced by the Charter of Liberties in 1100, in which King Henry I had specified particular areas wherein his powers would be limited.
Despite its recognised importance, by the second half of the 19th century nearly all of its clauses had been repealed in their original form. Three clauses currently remain part of the law of England and Wales, however, and it is generally considered part of the uncodified constitution. Lord Denning described it as "the greatest constitutional document of all times – the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot".[3] In a 2005 speech, Lord Woolf described it as "first of a series of instruments that now are recognised as having a special constitutional status",[4] the others being the Habeas Corpus Act (1679), the Petition of Right (1628), the Bill of Rights (1689), and the Act of Settlement (1701).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta
Drones should never be used within the United States or to target American citizens. Let's at least start there. And why do I say we should not use them to target American citizens? Because the Constitution prohibits our government from denying the right of habeas corpus other than in insurrection.
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; you only need them to sail against the wind ("by" -- guess what phrase those lead to?) I guess the Arabs had already invented them, but they didn't make it to Europe until after the crusades.
