Congresswoman Barbara Lee, via the Daily Californian
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There are problems with both Paul's and Lee's stands. With Paul’s filibuster, the issue was specificity. The senator was far too hung up on the hypothetical case of an American being droned in a café, as opposed to a wider examination of America’s military attacks throughout the world. Lee’s preoccupation isn’t nationality, but legality; her skepticism of the government’s program boils down to whether or not Obama will be transparent about UAV killing large swaths of people.Lee's skepticism of the drone program boils down to whether or not Obama will be transparent about UAV killing large swaths of people.
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Rep. Lee discusses the "blank check for war" that's fueled the War on Terror.
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John Yoo, former assistant US attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, cooked up the details of that joint resolution, and their broad contours were entirely intentional. As Wall Street Journal Supreme Court correspondent Jess Bravin details in his new book, The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay: Neither necessary nor appropriate was defined, and the sweep of permissible targets essentially was unbounded; the plural ‘nations’ included more than Afghanistan, while ‘persons’ subject to the president’s force could be anywhere, in an allied country such as Britain or Canada-or, like the 9/11 hijackers, within the United States. ‘Even the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution says it’s limited to Southeast Asia,’ Yoo said, pleased that he had provided Bush more authority than even Lyndon Johnson obtained through the 1964 measure he took as carte blanche for the Vietnam War.So, here's Lee asking for the administration to be transparent about its drone program and its argument for drones' legality. If the Obama administration obtains some sort of broad justification for its actions, one that transcends Attorney General Eric Holder addressing Paul's hyper-specific scenarios or the administration leaking its rationale to the New York Times, what then?Would Congress's lone dissenters be fine with letting the White House do whatever it wants with UAVs, as long as they have broad legal shelter? That's a scenario we've already seen play out, but this time the rising tide of dissenters in Congress may finally check the growth of executive powers.Shortly before Lee sent her letter, I wondered why John Conyers, another signer, deleted a tweet in support of Paul’s filibuster less than ten minutes after posting it. My best guess was that it was simply a matter of political posturing; perhaps he became aware of Lee’s forthcoming letter and decided to align himself with a group of progressive House members, as opposed to the confounding assortment of screwballs that spoke up in defense of Paul.Bipartisanship has, justifiably, devolved into a dirty word outside of Washington, cynically implemented by both sides to celebrate the banal, domestic destruction of two-party harmony. But imagine if some of these wildcard fruitcakes and an assortment of these progressive politicians pushed back, as a unit?Maybe such resistance would open up the necessary space to have a national conversation, not just about whether an American could be assassinated or if the Obama administration should release the basis behind its authorization, but about the expanding nature of our drone program, what it means for us, and what it means for the rest of the world.Would Congress's lone dissenters be fine with the use of drones, as long as they have broad legal shelter?