I will be posting on the Obama administration's filing in the Anwar al-Awlaki case asserting its authority to kill anyone, even an American citizen, suspected of terrorism, but for now I just want to point out who signed the brief:
Who is Tony West? He's the assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the Justice Department. Prior to joining the Obama administration, he defended "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, for which he was smeared by Liz Cheney's pro-torture organization as a member of the so-called Gitmo Nine, the group of lawyers Cheney and National Review's Andy McCarthy said were terrorist sympathizers and shouldn't be allowed to work in the Justice Department.
Now he's defending the administration's right to kill anyone, anywhere, on mere suspicion of terrorist activity, even if that person is an American citizen. Because that's his job. And just in case you were wondering if the conservative smear machine had let the whole "Gitmo 9/al-Qaeda Seven" thing go, they were going after West in July because he was fighting Arizona's SB 1070. Which is also his job.
It's almost as if Cheney and McCarthy, both lawyers, have no idea how the American legal system works. Either that or they just think there's nothing wrong with trying to destroy people's lives by casting them as terrorist sympathizers just to score a few political points. The idea that any of these people were going to make administration policy "more sympathetic to terrorists" was always really stupid.
Either way, I think it's way past time people stopped listening to them, not that I'm holding my breath.
UPDATE: Spencer Ackerman noticed first. This is what I get for actually staying off the Internet this weekend.
