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Analysis Review Science

Acropolis Now: The Rolling

As I detailed last month, my former residence, presciently nicknamed Acropolis, has been lifted into the air by hydraulic jacks and left to rest on wooden towers known as ‘cribs’. This was done for a reason: the house needed to be moved eight or nine feet toward the street in order to make room for townhomes in what was the house’s backyard. Heady stuff, I know.

Lifting the house up on stilts was impressive enough, but I couldn’t quite imagine how they were then going to move it thereafter. On the Tuesday before last, I found out.

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Analysis Foreign Policy Review

DOJ targeted killing white paper makes chilling mockery of sense, english

As is well known, American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a drone attack in Yemen on 30 September 2011. He was alleged by the government to have been a “senior talent recruiter” for al-Qaeda, primarily by creating “radicalising” YouTube videos. The administration never charged or indicted him of him with any crime, much less tried him before an impartial tribunal, so his killing should offend the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. The Obama Administration doesn’t agree with that straightforward analysis, but was unwilling to reveal the legal basis for their assumption of the power to execute American citizens in secret with no charge, trial, or congressional or judicial oversight. Members of Congress begged the Administration for months following al-Awlaki’s killing for memos explaining the Administration’s position, and finally the Administration deigned earlier this month to yield a draft white paper dated fifteen months ago — not to Congress proper, mind you, but to two of its subcommittees.

That white paper has now been leaked publicly. While it is unclear whether it completely details the Administration’s thinking, the paper is sufficiently devastating that Democratic California Representative Barbara Lee said in an open letter to the Los Angeles Times that it “should shake the American people to the core.” But Obama’s a nice guy, right, so how bad can it really be?