Adam Serwer is a reporter at Mother Jones. Formerly a staff writer at the American Prospect, he has written for the Washington Post, the Root, the Village Voice, and the New York Daily News.
A new survey from Gallup shows Americans oppose the use of drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists who are Americans whether those Americans are on American soil or abroad. But Americans still overwhelmingly back strikes against suspected terrorists abroad who are not American.
Here are the results, which suggest the public debate over targeted killing is affecting perceptions of the policy:
The most surprising result may be that 25 percent of those surveyed are okay with using drone strikes to target non-citizen terror suspects in the US. Maybe they just really don't like their neighbors?
Nevertheless, the premise of Gallup's question remains flawed. Although most of the debate over targeted killing has focused on drones, the survey is of limited usefulness because it focuses on the method of killing rather than the authority to kill. As far as Americans are concerned, the question is really whether and under what circumstances the government has the authority to use lethal force and what the limits are on that authority.
Although the use of drone airstrikes in the United States remains a far-fetched hypothetical, the use of targeted killing abroad is not. Between 3000 and 5000 people have been killed in US drone strikes abroad, including many civilians. Based on what we know publicly, only four Americans have ever been killed in drone strikes. Yet the kind of strikes the US is overwhelmingly engaged in are so popular that the number of people who oppose them is similar to the number who think the government should be firing missiles at terror suspects inside the United States.
Correction: This post originally stated that three Americans have been killed in drone strikes. The correct number is four.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez
Republicans are expected to fiercely oppose President Barack Obama's nomination of Thomas Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights and one of the more prominent progressives in his administration, to head the Labor Department. Already, Perez's GOP foes have accused him of corruption concerning a deal he helped forge in the Justice Department. This agreement prevented an unusual Minnesota housing discrimination case from going to the Supreme Court, and the full backstory—which Perez's critics haven't acknowledged—is a bizarre tale of legal complexities in which landlords tried to use a major civil rights law to protect themselves from city regulations meant to improve living conditions for low-income residents.
It all began in the early 2000s, when the city of St. Paul—after finding that many homes in low-income neighborhoods lacked heat or locks on the doors—kicked off an aggressive campaign of housing code enforcement. A group of landlords retaliated, brandishing an unexpected weapon: the 1968 Fair Housing Act. This law bars practices that adversely affect minorities, whether those practices were designed to discriminate or not—a legal standard known as disparate impact. The landlords alleged that the city's actions would force them out of business and harm their minority tenants whose access to affordable housing would be affected. The landlords were essentially arguing that by aggressively enforcing basic housing standards St. Paul was discriminating against low-income minorities, hoping to replace them with wealthier homeowners.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) endorsed a path to legalization—but not citizenship*—for unauthorized immigrants in the United States at a speech before the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Tuesday, another step on Paul's short, steep journey to moderation on immigration reform.
"If you wish to work, if you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you," Paul said Tuesday. "Somewhere along the line Republicans have failed to understand and articulate that immigrants are an asset to America, not a liability."
"Would I hope that when they become citizens, these new immigrants will remember Republicans who made this happen? Yes," wrote Paul in February, while later referred to "normalizing" or "legalizing" undocumented immigrants rather than granting them citizenship. "But my support for immigration reform comes not from political expediency but because it's the right thing to do." Paul also wrote that undocumented immigrants eligible for the DREAM Act—those brought to the US as children who are poised to go to college or join the military—should be legalized first. "I would start with Dream Act kids, children brought here illegally as minors."
Paul has come a long way on immigration. In 2008, he was a believer in the "Amero" conspiracy—the secret plan to merge Canada, the United States, and Mexico and create a "borderless mass continent" under a single currency called the "Amero." During his 2010 Senate run, when he campaigned as a tea party insurgent, he struck a hard line on immigration. "We shouldn't provide an easy route to citizenship," Paul said in 2010 during an interview with Russia Today. In the same interview, Paul rejected the guarantee of birthright citizenship in the 14th Amendment: "We're the only country that I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also." Another reason Paul opposed immigration reform and birthright citizenship? "A lot of this is about demographics," Paul said during the RT interview. "If you look at new immigrants from Mexico, they register 3-to-1 Democrat, so the Democrat Party is for easy citizenship and for allowing them to vote."
On his campaign website in 2010, Paul endorsed making English "the official language of all documents and contracts." He wanted "an underground electric fence, with helicopter stations to respond quickly to breaches of the border." He supported Arizona's harsh anti-immigration law, part of which was struck down by the Supreme Court. Paul insisted in his speech Tuesday that security must be a component of comprehensive immigration reform, abandoning the electrified fence idea but insisting on "drones, satellite, and physical barriers, vigilant deportation of criminals, and increased patrols" to help secure the border. (Prior security benchmarks have largely been met, and border crossings are way down, but on the right it's an article of faith that nothing has been done.)
Still, legalization without citizenship is a nonstarter for comprehensive immigration reform supporters, who say it would create a large permanent group of second-class citizens.
Paul has yet to join the GOP's big stars in supporting path to citizenship a group that includes Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and Jeb Bush (R-Fla.). Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who joined Paul during his drone filibuster, still opposes a path to citizenship.
Passage of an immigration reform bill that guarantees a path to citizenship for the nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States depends on how many GOPers in the House and Senate decide to follow the path of Marco Rubio, rather than that of Cruz. Although he's come along way from his original hardline positions, Paul remains somewhere between the two.
Correction: An earlier version of this post erroneously stated that Paul now supports a path to citizenship; he does not.
Thomas Perez, head of the Justice Department's civil rights division.
President Barack Obama will nominate Thomas Perez, currently the head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, to be the next secretary of labor, Politico reports.
Perez is well-regarded by organized labor and his tenure as the head of the civil rights division has been praised by civil rights groups. But he's long been a target of the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Chuck Grassley. Grassley's concerns revolve around Perez's involvement in a Minnesota fair housing case. The division has also come under fire from Republicans over its handling of the New Black Panther voter intimidation case, but an Inspector General's report released last week did not conclude that the decision to narrow the case, which was made before Perez was confirmed, was based on racial or political bias.
If confirmed, Perez would likely be the most progressive member of Obama's cabinet, which is reason enough for Republicans to fight his nomination.
Obama discussing drones in his 2013 Googe+ Fireside Hangout.
If you want to keep something a secret, you probably shouldn't brag about it.
That may seem obvious. But the Obama administration's habit of singing the virtues of its supposedly secret targeted killing program is the reason a panel of three federal judges on the DC Circuit ruled against the government on Friday, finding that the CIA cannot continue to claim it has not acknowledged its involvement in the use of drones in targeted killings. Quoting newly minted CIA Director John Brennan, former CIA Director Leon Panetta, and President Barack Obama himself, Judge Merrick Garland wrote that "it is neither logical nor plausible" for the CIA to say it would reveal anything not already public to admit that the Agency "at least has an intelligence interest" in such strikes. "The defendant is, after all, the Central Intelligence Agency," the judges added. Friday's ruling reverses a previous one from 2011 in which a lower court ruled in favor of the government.
Since 2010, the ACLU has been seeking information from the CIA on when, where, and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and how and whether the US ensures compliance with international law restricting extrajudicial killings. The CIA had argued that "no authorized CIA or Executive Branch official has disclosed whether or not the CIA possesses records regarding drone strikes or whether or not the CIA is involved in drone strikes or has an interest in drone strikes." According to the CIA's argument, just because high ranking officials can't stop talking about how targeted killing is effective, only kills bad guys, and always complies with the law doesn't mean it's not a secret.
This doesn't mean the CIA will be releasing the documents. The Agency will have to explain and list which documents it has, and either release them or find another reason to argue why they can't be released—and there are national security exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act the Agency could use to avoid having to hand them over. "It's only a small step forward but an important one," says Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU attorney who argued the case. "It will also make it more difficult for government officials to deflect questions about the program."
