Disarm the People, Unleash the Drones: The Feinstein Agenda

Will Grigg
Feb. 12, 2013

John Brennan, the official nominated to become the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency, presided over the secretive White House panel that selected individuals for targeted killings. Hundreds of people, including at least three U.S. citizens, have been killed in drone attacks on presidential orders.

According to a legal memo released this week, the Obama administration takes the position that the president has the innate authority to order the summary execution of any individual he considers a potential threat.

In a letter to Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ralph Nader and former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein urged that Brennan’s confirmation hearings include legal scholars who have criticized the drone-killing program. They point out that the drone-killings “combine prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner in a single person – the high water mark of tyranny in the view of the Constitution’s makers.”

Rather than allowing critics of this program to testify in Brennan’s confirmation hearings, Senator Feinstein has limited testimony to the nominee himself.

The same Senator Feinstein, of course, is promoting severe restrictions on private firearms ownership. She sees nothing at all wrong with disarming the population while giving the president an unrestricted license to kill American citizens.