: re: Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 7:43 AM
Subject: re: Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Our republic was founded on the assertion that all citizens are collectively sovereign and none is above the law. No one has seriously challenged this tenet since Richard Nixon let slip "what I'm saying is that when the president does it, that means it's not illegal". By then, America had decisively rejected him and his paranoid theories, hounding him from office.

   But a new theory, no less insidious has grown up in the same niche. Now we are told, the president of the United States can't be prosecuted for what he did in good faith on the advice of his lawyers, and his lawyers can't be prosecuted for what they do in their office. Presto! Even when a crime may be proven, culpability magically vanishes when it's spread over enough lawyers. This is abomination.  President Obama and judge Barron may disagree over the details. But one or both of them need to stand trial for the murders of the al-Awlakis, father and son. And since the president's own Department of Justice can't be trusted to prosecute such a case, it falls to our Congress to impeach. I'm pretty sure murdering a citizen for political speech is a "high crime".

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/middleeast/secret-us-memo-made-legal-case-to-kill-a-citizen.html?pagewanted=all