Lists ...

When one learns Latin with Wheelock's fine text, "Wheelock's Latin", one translates many, many sentences about tyrants. For example, one finds exercises with 16 ways to say, "The tyrants were driven from the city" using difference cases and verb tenses. The Roman people knew about tyrants and feared them. This is why a Roman citizen had the right to a trial. Tyrants like Sulla just put names on lists for "proscription", i., e. killing. Lists of the proscribed had names added for many reasons, such as the coveted estates of the doomed.

The writers of the US Constitution knew about tyrants, too. That is why they wrote the Treason clause in the US Constitution. They knew about abuse of the charge of Treason from the history of England, hence the very specific rules for treason charges of Article III, section 3 and the limit on punishment from running to a person's family [working Corruption of the Blood] and even limiting forfeiture.

I wrote about these matters in a prior post [see February 16, 2010, "The Fundamental Rights of American Citizens"]. Now we have more information: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/07/assassinations

Here's the key part: "Today, both The New York Times and The Washington Post confirm that the Obama White House has now expressly authorized the CIA to kill al-Alwaki no matter where he is found, no matter his distance from a battlefield." And: "in Barack Obama's America, the way guilt is determined for American citizens -- and a death penalty imposed -- is that the President, like the King he thinks he is, secretly decrees someone's guilt as a Terrorist. He then dispatches his aides to run to America's newspapers -- cowardly hiding behind the shield of anonymity which they're granted -- to proclaim that the Guilty One shall be killed on sight because the Leader has decreed him to be a Terrorist."

From The Mikado of Gilbert & Sullivan:

As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list — I've got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!

That's quite humorous in the Gilbert & Sullivan play. But it's not funny now. Barry has a little list. Who's on it and why ?

And More

I'm waiting for the screeches from the American left. We can only imagine the demonstrations if George W. Bush had done this.

From the link about: "And what about all the progressives who screamed for years about the Bush administration's tyrannical treatment of Jose Padilla? Bush merely imprisoned Padilla for years without a trial. If that's a vicious, tyrannical assault on the Constitution -- and it was -- what should they be saying about the Nobel Peace Prize winner's assassination of American citizens without any due process?" [my emphasis.]

Maybe Barry should get a new nickname, something like Sulla.

Populus tyrannum timuit. The people feared the tyrant.

Word of the Day

"Dyslogism" - noun [$100]; from "Dyslogistic" - adjective [$100]
Dyslogistic means conveying disapproval or censure; not complimentary or eulogistic.
Dyslogism means an example or instance of dyslogistic speech or behavior.
Sentence: (A) Many comments in this blog are dyslogisms towards other commentors. I guess that's OK - a free fire zone for free speech has to be ... free. (B) How can any principled person write or speak about Barry's list in other than quite dyslogistical terms ?