Olbermann on Obama's assassination program
(updated below - Update II)
There are many
legitimate criticisms
voiced about
Keith Olbermann,
but he deserves
substantial
credit for his coverage
last night of a story
that is as self-evidently significant as it is under-covered:
Barack Obama's assassination program aimed at American
citizens. He not only led off his show with this story, but
devoted the first two segments to it, and made many of the
key observations and asked virtually all of the right questions.
The videos of those two segments, worth watching, are below.
What's most striking to me about all of this is that -- as I noted
yesterday (and as Olbermann stressed) -- George Bush's decision
merely to eavesdrop on American citizens without oversight,
or to detain without due process Americans such as
Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, provoked years of vehement,
vocal and intense complaints from Democrats and progressives.
All of that was disparaged as Bush claiming the powers of a
King, a vicious attack on the Constitution, a violation of Our
Values, the trampling on the Rule of Law. Yet here you have
Barack Obama not merely eavesdropping on or detaining
Americans without oversight, but ordering them killed
with no oversight and no due process of any kind. And the
reaction among leading Democrats and progressives is
largely non-existent, which is why Olbermann's extensive
coverage of it is important. Just imagine what the reaction
would have been among progressive editorial pages, liberal
opinion-makers and Democratic politicians if this story had
been about George Bush and Dick Cheney targeting American
citizens for due-process-free and oversight-less CIA
assassinations.
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