Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul struck a raw nerve in the weak underbelly of the Obama administration last month with his 13-hour filibuster. Paul was furious\u2014as every American should be\u2014that the president refused to admit that he does not possess the lawful authority to kill Americans with drones. The senator used the confirmation hearings of now CIA Director John Brennan as a forum in which to articulate the principled constitutional argument that whenever the government wants the life, liberty or property of anyone, it can only obtain that via due process.<\/p>\n
Due process is the command of the Fifth Amendment. \u201cDue process\u201d is the jurisprudential phrase for a fair jury trial and the accompanying constitutional protections. The reasons we have these protections are the wish of the Framers that our natural rights\u2014here, the rights to life, liberty and property and to fairness from the government\u2014be guaranteed and their fear that they not suffer under another Star Chamber. Star Chamber was a secret gaggle of advisers to British kings that decided who among the king\u2019s adversaries would lose his life, liberty or property without due process. Once that decision was made, it was carried out.<\/p>\n
Paul articulated all of this during his filibuster. He did not read gibberish, as those who have filibustered in the past sometimes have done. He made principled moral and legal arguments for 13 hours. His arguments read like a passionate college lecture on personal liberty in a free society.<\/p>\n
The next day, Attorney General Eric Holder sent a terse letter to Paul that reads in its entirety as follows: \u201cIt has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: \u2018Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?\u2019 The answer to that question is no.\u201d This is an unremarkable statement, but one that only came about after the senatorial equivalent of pulling teeth.<\/p>\n
Paul\u2019s filibuster was prompted by the administration\u2019s repeated refusal to answer that question. Those refusals came from the testimony of Holder, FBI Director Robert Mueller and then CIA Director-nominee Brennan. They all declined to answer the question of whether the president has the power to use drones to kill Americans in America, and they all referred the questioners to their boss in the White House.<\/p>\n
Their boss in the White House has never publicly answered that question, but he has exercised that horrific power without publicly defending or legally justifying it. When lawyers for potential victims of presidential killings (how terrifying does that sound?) sought to ascertain the source of that power, the president dispatched Justice Department lawyers into court to persuade judges that the legal argument supporting killings is classified. That\u2019s because, those Justice Department lawyers argued, the decisions to kill\u2014just like Star Chamber\u2019s decisions to kill\u2014are made in secret; hence, the legal support for the killings must be kept secret.<\/p>\n
How could a legal argument be classified? How could a judge accept that sophistry? How could a president sworn to uphold the Constitution claim the power to kill people on his own?<\/p>\n
As if to antagonize further those who believe the Constitution means what it says, the same president who says he can\u2019t reveal the legal basis for his killing wants to take away your right to self-defense against a killer, and he wants to prevent you from having the means with which to shoot at a tyrant should such a monster take over the government.<\/p>\n
The reason we are a free and independent people today is our secession from Great Britain, and that secession only came about because we had the means with which to repel the soldiers of the British king. Without weaponry in the hands of ordinary folks and unknown to the government (so it doesn\u2019t know from whom to seize weapons), we will lack the ability to repel a modern-day George III.<\/p>\n