The common understanding of the due process language in the U.S. Constitution is that the basic elements are a trial, the right to be informed of the charges against you, and the right to face your accuser. Attorney General Eric Holder has a different, even curious interpretation of the Constitution. Speaking at Northwestern Law School on March 5, Holder said: "'Due process' and 'judicial process' are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process." What Holder seems to be saying is that, at least in regard to terrorism, all that is constitutionally required is a process, no matter how secretive and flimsy in nature.
President Barack Obama has assumed the power to order the assassination of a U.S. citizen, a step-up in power that even the law-adverse George W. Bush did not venture to assume. Reuters has said that the decision to assassinate would be based on a "kill or capture list" drawn up by a "secretive panel of senior government officials." The Justice Department has responded to an ACLU request for information about the assassination program by neither confirming nor denying the existence of any records.
Who is a terrorist? The operative definition is that a terrorist is one "who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces;" therefore, a terrorist is someone the president has accused and then deemed in secret to be a terrorist without the need to present any evidence. The president and senior underlings are judge, jury and even executioner wrapped up in one.
When Barack Obama was a U.S. senator from Illinois, he denounced the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba with the charge that "a perfectly innocent individual could be held and could not rebut the Government's case and has no way of proving his innocence." Senator Obama even mocked the right-wing claim "that judicial inquiry is an antique, trivial and dispensable luxury."
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