Do Drones Fit Under Current Law?

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles -- drone aircraft -- grow more sophisticated and cheaper every day. The Obama Administration has amply proved their effectiveness as weapons, and drones continue to kill people in Yemen and Pakistan almost every week. The political and social impact of those strikes is changing the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan, with consequences military officials can not foresee with any accuracy.

As always, such developments have spread beyond their original use. Law enforcement and counterintelligence types now look forward to the day when they can fly drones in US skies to keep  an eye on what's happening in this country. This blog has discussed this possibility before, but the Times considered it again this week.

It's not obvious how drone surveillance fits into current American law. The US Supreme Court recently heard arguments about the use of drug-sniffing dogs, and the way it rules there may indicate how the current justices think about the concept of privacy. The drafters of the 4th Amendment did not envision the government looking at our "persons, papers and effects," and it';s not clear how drone surveillance would affect how "secure" we are in those things, anyway. Police drive back and forth along city streets all the time, and that is not considered an invasion of privacy;   if they watching from much farther away but with much better cameras, might that not be simply a more effective way of doing the same thing? Still, the idea is creepy.

But the main point is that once again life has outstripped law. Obama wants rules in place, and that's a start, but Congress and the courts need to get to work, too.

No Words

I have said before that I can not understand the position of gun-ownership advocates like the NRA. But no gun control proposal short of banning all guns could have prevented the massacre at Newtown, Connecticut on Friday. The woman who owned the guns would have passed every check. The guns themselves do not, I believe, qualify as assault weapons, so even the proposed limits on certain firearms would not help.

NRA-type arguments that her gun possession could have protected her are nonsense, since she was not going to shoot her son as he drove up to her house. And I hope no one is suggesting that we arm teachers at elementary schools.

This is one we just have to swallow. As a father of young children and an uncle of two girls who were in school 20 minutes from Newtown, the story is beyond painful. But let's not pretend it can be fixed.

Is This a Republican Form of Government?

The United States Constitution guarantees to each state a "republican form of government." Nowhere does it explain exactly what that means, but we can assume a few things and the Supreme Court has announced a few others.

First, government must be chosen through democratic elections. For no good reason, the US Supreme Court has said that state legislatures, unlike the federal one, must include two houses both of which are directly elected. It also has created a series of rules about the way election districts can be drawn. (see Reynolds v. Sims)

Second, there ought to be some level of transparency and the rule of law. People ought to be able to understand what the law says and how it was written

By this second standard, the state of New York is like a bizarrely wealthy and high-developed political backwater. For the last few weeks, Albany insiders have been railing on about the way state senate leadership will affect jobs, the economy, minorities and a bunch of other stuff. But I can not find a single explanation for why the back-room dealings a few members of the smaller house of the state legislature should entirely determine the agenda for the government for the next term. How are these decisions made? Once they are made, how do they coerce the rest of the membership to do what they are told?

I have been trying -- admittedly not that hard -- to figure this stuff out for a while, and I can't. But shouldn't it be obvious?

Perspective: Americans Should be Thankful

The United States is not governed well at the moment. Squabbles over the "fiscal cliff," which real adults would have resolved months ago, reflect a loss of perspective and a lack of true leadership.

But at least we are not Russia.


I recently finished Masha Gessen's The Man Without a Face,  a biography of Vladimir Putin, in which Gessen describes the cold-blooded brutality of the Russian president's rise to power. She focuses primarily the effect of this one man's character on Russian political culture, but in the background we see the complicity of many Russians themselves. Gessen and thousands of other Russians try to stand up to the lawlessness of their own government, and those dissenters are to be commended. But too may others -- a critical mass, it would seem -- not only condone the nastiness, but act to support it in quiet but equally callous ways. It takes a nation to allow this stuff.

Putin's new program, typical of tyrants everywhere, and totalitarian leaders especially, is to deny his own failure of governance and to fall back on propaganda to pump up support. He wants Russians to be patriotic, so he's putting together slogans and flags and other nonsense.

At least American leaders accept the basic principle of the rule of law. The GOP accepted defeat in recent elections, and did not attempt to steal the vote in the first place. This is no small thing.

Another Reason Elections Matter

President Obama has not worked very hard to explain his policy on drone assassinations. By neither denying nor confirming the practice, he has maintained the fiction that they are not really happening; the policy has become one of those open secrets that characterize the worst dictatorships.


image from "The Excavator"

But, as the New York Times reports today, the specter of someone else killing people arbitrarily apparently made the administration uncomfortable enough to take the whole thing more seriously. Scott Shane writes:

The attempt to write a formal rule book for targeted killing began last summer after news reports on the drone program, started under President George W. Bush and expanded by Mr. Obama, revealed some details of the president’s role in the shifting procedures for compiling “kill lists” and approving strikes. Though national security officials insist that the process is meticulous and lawful, the president and top aides believe it should be institutionalized, a course of action that seemed particularly urgent when it appeared that Mitt Romney might win the presidency.

In other words, having too much power yourself seems like a good idea; giving that much clout to another seems scary.

This is why regular changes of power are so  important. Obama and his people needed to be a little jittery, and they still ought to be even after the election.

image from "Stirring Trouble Internationally"

Republican Laggers

If you still don’t understand why the Republican Party lost the election, here’s some more information:

First, many party functionaries, including Mitt himself, are angry at New Jersey governor Chris Christie for being overly civil to President Obama when the president toured areas ravaged by Hurricane Sandy. People want to know why Christie had to embrace Obama, why he had to fly in Marine One, why he had to praise the president’s efforts right when the campaign was coming to a climax.

In other words, GOP-sters can’t understand why the governor would waste his time governing during a crisis when there was important work to do in winning an election. What’s the point in expending all that effort if it does not lead to scoring points in the polls.

This cynical calculation, promoted by jerks like Mitch McConnell of Tennessee and Karl Rove, lost the election for the Republicans and hamper progress in serious matters in need of attention from the federal government. Ever since 2000, the Republican Party establishment has operated on the assumption that getting into office is far more important than doing any good once there, and people are sick of it. Memories of the political hucksterism and profound disconnect of the Bush Administration’s response to Katrina (“heckuva job Brownie”) did as much to cost the election as Christie’s hugs.

Second, Grover Norquist continues to insist that peoplewill refuse to raise taxes at all because that’s what Republicans do, even as members of the party have finally come around to the position that avoiding fiscal collapse is more important than electioneering. He is immune to all empirical evidence, and demands ideological consistency in the face of disaster. Better to fiddle to the party tune and let the city burn. Even that bastion of socialism, Forbes magazine, has condemned Norquist's tactics as "blackmail" and "extortion," and has labeled him that deadliest of pariahs, a "special interest."

It's time for the GOP to jettison this nonsense and return to efforts to govern the country.

What has Changed?

If we are lucky, last week's election will change the political landscape not so much in which policies are adopted, but in the way we talk about government. The Republican Party leadership says it feels chastened, and that its basic approach needs to change. Tea Party attacks, the new statements say, cost the election and led to an embarrassing experience on Tuesday.



Perhaps most heartening is the repudiation of Karl Rove's cynical attempts to manipulate the system. After years of doing nothing but trying to suppress minority voting and issuing Orwellian untruths, Rove has been exposed as a liar and a rogue, who actually needs Fox News anchors to clue him in on reality. His Super PAC's and political gaming failed in this election, when President Obama and the Democrats should have been vulnerable to a whupping.

Now, maybe we can talk about actual policy and engage in meaningful debates. Having lost in every demographic other than aging white men, GOP strategists are suggesting that maybe the party should try something constructive, like passing immigration reform, bagging the Christian-hypocrite position on abortion, and applying sound conservative economic thinking rather than bizarre litmus tests like Grover Norquist's. That kind of thinking would result in a reinvigorated Republican Party, and that could only be good for American politics.

We're not out of the woods, Norquist, Rove and that other cynical stooge, Mitch McConnell, are still trying to defend their old practices. If more progressive and moderate Republicans -- or even conservative ones like Boehner -- succumb to this thinking, we will continue to suffer from political silliness that may prevent serious action on environmental, social and economic issues. The rest of us can't fight this battle; it has to be waged with the party itself, and I am rooting for the good guys, even if I am not a member (of any party.)