Howdy, all – it’s been a while since I’ve written anything on this blog.
So earlier today, CNN reported on a letter written by Attorney General Eric Holder to Senator Rand Paul regarding the use of drones on American soil. Now, I’ve already seen people start to freak out about what the letter said, so let’s post the full text so we can all go over it together:
As members of this administration have previously indicated, the US government has not carried out drone strikes in the United States and has no intention of doing so. As a policy matter moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat. We have a long history of using the criminal justice system to incapacitate individuals located in our country who pose a threat to the United States and its interests abroad. Hundreds of individuals have been arrested and convicted of terrorism-related offenses in our federal courts.
The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront. It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States. For example, the president could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances like a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.
Were such an emergency to arise, I would examine the particular facts and circumstances before advising the president of the scope of his authority.
Scary stuff, right?
So, as some of you may have heard, a bomb damaged a Planned Parenthood clinic in Wisconsin this Sunday. You know the situation has become dangerous when even Rick Santorum has to condemn these actions. I’m wondering if many of my fellow conservatives (and my former party, the GOP) are going to actually bite the bullet and start referring to this incident (and many others like it) as what they actually are: acts of domestic terrorism. I remember when Sarah Palin refused to call those who bombed abortion clinics terrorists.
This is something I encountered quite a bit during my days in the GOP. I ran into quite a few anti-choice (or pro-life, if you prefer) folk who CATEGORICALLY refused to call those who would bomb an abortion clinic or attack abortion doctors/staffers ‘terrorists’. While they would offer lukewarm condemnations of the violence, they would *also* try to defend it to some extent by saying these people are ‘trying to protect innocent people from being murdered’.
Howdy, all. While I work on a few posts to put up here, I decided I’d post another paper I had to do for class – this one is *much* smaller than the previous paper I posted. Basically, I had to do an issue brief and a presentation on the subject of how the U.S. should treat mercenaries captured on the battlefield – are they POWs? Unprivileged combatants? How should PMCs and PSCs be considered? Anyways, it’s rather short, but I hope some of you may find it interesting.
I made this into a video, once – and interestingly enough, someone called me a nazi and a fascist because of it. Go figure.
Hi, all. This is a paper I wrote for one of my grad school classes on the subject of Cyber Security. I figure it may be of interest to some of you, so I’ve decided to post it here as a blog post. This will probably be familiar to some of you, as I turned most of this paper into a script for a video at one point. Anyways, if you’re nerdy and like policy stuff, you may enjoy it.
Howdy, all! It’s been a few weeks since I last updated this blog. I’ve had a lot on my plate lately and have taken some time off to try to clear my head. But on to the point of this post! I’ve grown increasingly disgusted with the behavior and actions of the Republican Party over the past few years. I’ve *never* been comfortable with the religiosity and social stances of the GOP, but for far too long I was willing to set that aside in the hope that they would deliver on some of the fiscal and foreign policy promises they made. This was … well, the wrong decision, to put it mildly.
As most of you who follow this probably already know, I decided to leave the Republican Party several days weeks ago and become a Democrat. Most of the people I told about this decision weren’t exactly shocked, as my beliefs and that of the Republican Party have become increasingly distant as the party has gleefully done everything it can to further divorce itself from reality and sanity. I’ve somewhat discussed the reasons for my leaving the party via a variety of mediums (mostly Facebook and Twitter), but I figured it would be cathartic (and hopefully somewhat interesting) to explain it in detail. So, hopefully everyone will pardon my self-indulgent screed and at least find some entertainment value in all of this.
Let’s get started, shall we?
Hello, everyone!
If you’re reading this, you most probably already know me from either Twitter or YouTube; for those of you who don’t know me, a brief introduction is in order. My name is Rob – formerly The Melian Dialogue (among other names) from YouTube. I’m currently in my last semester of grad school. I’m an atheist whose is primarily interested in politics and international affairs. Most of my posts here will probably fall under those subjects, but from time to time I will also talk about video games or anything else that happens to be on my mind.
For those of you who used to watch my YouTube channel, you will probably see some repeat content here, as I will probably post the scripts for some of my older videos as well as some of the papers I have written on subjects that may interest whatever few readers I attract to this thing.
I’ll be playing with the format and layout of this as time goes on, so expect radical changes from time to time.
- The Melian Dialogue
