A BAD IDEA GETS WORSE BY Charles P. Pierce (brilliant take-down of the drone program)

[kpete]

FEB 21, 2013
A Bad Idea Gets Worse
By Charles P. Pierce
at 12:30am




Read more: A Bad Idea Gets Worse - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Outlaw_In_The_Oval#ixzz2LeLwsRwx



First, we have the ongoing charade of "transparency" as regards the president's assumed right to kill Americans anywhere in the world including, absent a clear statement from this administration, which has not been forthcoming, within the borders of the United States. Then we have the drone program itself, which is a constitutional abomination no matter how effective you presume it is. Then, we have another attempt to reach a kind of bipartisan consensus with the various vandals and predatory fauna in the other party. And then, last, as part of the attempt at bipartisan consensus, a deal is struck in which the president's hit list is kept in a vault while more fuel is fed into the Benghazi!, BENGHAZI!, BENGHAZI!!!!!!!111!!! infernal machine just as it was so sputtering to a halt that even John McCain was calling a cab to pick him up by the side of the road. I swear, if this deal goes through, Lindsey Graham is going to have a woody you could see from space.

This is what happens when you elect someone -- anyone -- to the presidency as that office is presently constituted. Of all the various Washington mystery cults, the one at that end of Pennsylvania Avenue is the most impenetrable. This is why the argument many liberals are making -- that the drone program is acceptable both morally and as a matter of practical politics because of the faith you have in the guy who happens to be presiding over it at the moment -- is criminally naive, intellectually empty, and as false as blue money to the future. The powers we have allowed to leach away from their constitutional points of origin into that office have created in the presidency a foul strain of outlawry that (worse) is now seen as the proper order of things. If that is the case, and I believe it is, then the very nature of the presidency of the United States at its core has become the vehicle for permanently unlawful behavior. Every four years, we elect a new criminal because that's become the precise job description.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Outlaw_In_The_Oval

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[cheapdate]

2. Not brilliant.

There are numerous questions regarding the use of drones that present genuine dilemmas. Pierce presents none of them in any serious way. I'd hardly call his short piece brilliant. I've seen much more substantive presentations of the arguments for and against the use of drones as an instrument of war.

[blkmusclmachine]

3. A War on the US, from within the US. That's what Drones are.

Can't sugarcoat this thing.