Who Died and Made Him Emperor?

President Obama has elevated himself to Emperor of the United States with all the associated despotic powers. As president he did not possess the power, under any circumstances, to order the assassination of an American citizen, but as Emperor he can order one of the federal law enforcement agencies to murder that citizen in cold blood without having to justify his actions.

• If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify. - Alexander Hamilton

The anarchic climate Obama is attempting to establish is more egregious than the abuses of the Constitution George W. Bush perpetrated during his term (Although W ordered the creation of a hit list, he never acted on it). Emperor Obama has ordered the CIA to assassinate an American citizen without due process.

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  Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen... If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. - Justice Louis D. Brandeis

The citizen in question is an American born Islamic cleric named Anwar al-Awlaki and he is by no means an upstanding model of American patriotism. He has advocated attacks against American military targets and has been a vocal adversary of this country’s policies concerning the Middle East. Obama has ordered his assassination because he believes that this individual has shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, but he offers no proof. The fifth amendment of the United States Constitution stands in stark contrast to Obama’s presumed authority:

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  No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
  

However, Obama claims the right to commit murder under authority granted by Congress with the passage of AUMF (Authorized Use of Military Force) shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001. A cursory assessment of this authorization raises more questions than it answers. Only Congress can declare war, which it has not done since World War II, but the president does not require a declaration of war to immediately respond to any acts of aggression he feels endangers this country or its citizens. So what purpose was served by passing AUMF when it was always within the authority of the president to respond with immediate military force?

• Emergency does not create power. Emergency does not increase granted power or remove or diminish the restrictions imposed upon power granted or reserved. The Constitution was adopted in a period of grave emergency. Its grants of power to the federal government and its limitations of the power of the States were determined in the light of emergency, and they are not altered by emergency. - Justice Charles Evans Hughes

Congress does not have the courage necessary to declare war and they have gone to great lengths to avoid their Constitutional duty in that regard. Yet, they have attempted to conduct business as though the country were actually engaged in a declared war which must include the authorities granted to the president as Commander in Chief. This is because the president is officially the Commander in Chief only as stated in the U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States. If not at war, the president has other civilians in charge of the military as required by the Constitution.

As his predecessor, George W. Bush, Obama is endangering the lives of our military to prolong an undeclared war just to protect his assumed authority he tells us he is granted because of that war. It is as much of a sham now as it was under the criminal administration of Cheney and Bush, and it is equally criminal. If Obama succeeds in having an American citizen assassinated without due process, whether war has been declared or not, he will have committed the federal crime of commissioning murder. And if he is allowed to get away with murder because the target happens to be objectionable, anti-American, and Islamic, then what is to prevent him from ordering the assassination of other, not quite so objectionable citizens? And if he will not afford the accused due process of the law this time, nor present conclusive and compelling evidence of this person’s guilt, what will stop him from ordering assassinations of any of us based merely on his say?