Fake News: 27 Recent Fake Stories I Wasn’t Able To Post About

Fake News: 27 Recent Fake Stories I Wasn’t Able To Post About

by | Jul 11, 2017 | Blog, Fake News

 

I’ve been way behind on posting the past week, and didn’t get a chance to post several fake news stories. It’s been a busy 10 days or so for fake news too. Here’s a list of fake news from the past week:

Spicer, Trump, & SCOTUS Lies, Oh My!

FALSE: Sean Spicer: “Trump Has The Legal Right To Cancel SCOTUS Because They Serve At His Pleasure”

The president doesn’t, and Spicer never said he did.

Admitted satire outlet Newslo spread a rumor that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said “Trump has the legal right to cancel SCOTUS (The US Supreme Court) because they serve at his pleasure.” First off, no United States president has the legal authority to dissolve the Supreme Court. Secondly, Sean Spicer never made this statement to reporters. By its very nature, the U.S. Constitution prevents the president from disbanding the nation’s highest court.

Did A Cubs Player Flip Off President Trump?

FALSE: Albert Almora Showed His Middle Finger To President Trump

The Chicago Cubs outfielder and his teammates visited the Oval Office during a visit to the White House last month. One picture shows Almora with his hand in his pocket and what at first glance could appear to be his middle finger sticking out. Several websites claimed Almora was making an offensive gesture toward the president. However, closer examination of the photo revealed Almora had two fingers displayed. Almora denied making a gesture and called the episode “unfortunate.”

False: 17 Intelligence Agencies Say Russia Behind Hacking

I’ve been telling you for months that there was never any evidence 17 agencies concluded Russia was behind the DNC hacking. The story was officially retracted at the end of June. That’s nearly two weeks ago. A California Democrat introduced legislation to require students to learn about this fake news as if it were real. Yet Democrats and members of the media continue to make this false claim this last week.

Former DNI Clapper Says He Has No Idea How Myth Of 17 Agencies Got Out There

Perhaps he should have not taken 9 months to publicly denounce the 17 agency lie. As for the story’s origin … Hillary Clinton started the rumor, and no one bothered to vet it.

Maxine Waters Peddles 17 Agency Lie After Story is retracted

Jim Acosta of CNN and Katy Tur of NBC Repeat 17 Agency Lie After Story Was Retracted

Acosta asked: “Trump said it was only 3 or 4. Where did he get this number?”

He got it from the Director of National Intelligence under Obama, James Clapper. Click the link above to Clapper saying he made this clear to Trump in early January.

MSNBC’s Ali Velshi Pushes 17 Agency Lie After Story Is Retracted

Anti-Israel BBC Reporting

BBC Slammed By Former Chairman For Misleading Coverage Of Palestinian Terrorist Attack

Polish First Lady Didn’t Stub President Trump

CNN’s Chris Cillizza got the ball rolling on the supposed snub by Polish First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda. The story then went viral with multiple major media outlets and personalities repeating the false claim. Newsweek, Time, Huffington Post, and the Washington Post (video title) all got in on the lie. It got so bad the President of Poland felt he had to address it publicly.

Cillizaa would later admit he new the original edited video was misleading. This appears to be an attempt to soften the backlash he was getting, but all it did was serve as proof he intentionally misled people with a fake story.

Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to the President Addressed The Controversy

Pentagon Denies President Trump/ISIS Story

Exclusive: ‘None Of This Happened’: White House, Pentagon Call Trump ISIS Story Into Question

Members of the press widely circulated The Daily Beast’s claim on social media as evidence the Trump administration cannot come up with a better strategy than former President Barack Obama’s to defeat the terrorist group.

CNN Lies About States Cooperating With Trump’s Voter Fraud Panel

CNN claimed 44 States Refused Trump’s Voter Info Request

In reality, most states have not refused the data request. Kansas Secretary of State Kobach declared Wednesday that 14 states had refused and called news reporting by outlets like CNN “patently false, more ‘fake news.’”

Fake Hate From Trump Supporter

Man Told Police Anti-Trump Graffiti At School Was Out Of ‘Anger Toward Liberals’

Marks told police on June 19 he vandalized the property “out of ‘anger towards liberals and they are breaking major laws everyday and being disrespectful towards our government,'” according to the warrant for his arrest. He told police it was his hope that the vandalism would appear to have been done by the “Left.”

Global Warming Temperature Tampering Confirmed, Once Again

EXCLUSIVE: Study Finds Temperature Adjustments Account For ‘Nearly All Of The Warming’ In Climate Data

In fact, almost all the surface temperature warming adjustments cool past temperatures and warm more current records, increasing the warming trend, according to the study’s authors.

“Nearly all of the warming they are now showing are in the adjustments,” Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo, a study co-author, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “Each dataset pushed down the 1940s warming and pushed up the current warming.”

“You would think that when you make adjustments you’d sometimes get warming and sometimes get cooling. That’s almost never happened,” said D’Aleo, who co-authored the study with statistician James Wallace and Cato Institute climate scientist Craig Idso.

Attacks On President Trump’s Election Integrity Commission Without Merit

Attacks Against Ken Blackwell and Trump’s Voting Commission Debunked by the Facts

In fact, the only connection between Blackwell and the 80-lb. paper is that when asked if he would accept registrations on other types of paper, he initially responded that the state should continue to apply one uniform standard. The heavier paper had served well for several election cycles, and Blackwell saw no need to abandon that standard.

But the state then received large numbers of registrations collected by activists and hand-delivered to election officials. Blackwell concluded that the heavier paper was intended to protect ballots in the mail, but that given the large numbers of registrations being hand-delivered on lighter paper, he issued a new administrative policy that election officials should accept all such registrations so long as the forms were properly filled out.

Another New York Times Correction

New York Times Issues Correction After Claiming Sen. Rob Portman Was Laying Low on Fourth of July (He Wasn’t)

The New York Times was forced to issue a correction Wednesday to a story it published that initially claimed Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) was one of a number of Republicans lying low during the Fourth of July — except that Portman was anything but.

New York Times Falls For North Korea Parody Tweet

New York Times Falls for Parody North Korea Twitter Account

The Times story on a joint military exercise between the United States and South Korea noted that “the North Korean government belittled the joint exercise as ‘demonstrating near total ignorance of ballistic science.'”

But that statement came from the parody @DPRK_News account, in what was evidently a satirical tweet.

ABC News’ Pink Slime Myth Settled

Nets Protect their Own: Ignore ABC Defamation Settlement With Beef Company

ABC News and Beef Products Inc (BPI) reached a confidential settlement which concluded a 5-year-old lawsuit as of June 27. BPI filed a $1.9 billion lawsuit against ABC News in 2012 for reports that the company’s lean finely textured beef (LFTB) as dangerous “pink slime.” ABC may have been liable for up to $5.7 billion if it lost the case because of South Dakota’s Agricultural Food products Disparagement Act.

Trump NATO Lies By CNN Debunked By CNN’s Own Reporting

More Very Fake News from CNN: Network Analyst Claims Trump Never Made Article 5 Commitment to NATO

On the morning of the Fourth of July, CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer, also a historian at Princeton University, inaccurately claimed that President Trump never made an Article 5 commitment to America’s NATO allies.

This one is unbelievably easy to debunk. All one has to do is go look at CNN’s own reporting, from a June 9 report on its website from CNN politics reporter Jeremy Herb, to see that CNN analyst Zelizer is lying on national television.

The headline of Herb’s early June report speaks for itself: “Trump commits to NATO’s Article 5.”

“I am committing the United States to Article 5,” the CNN report quotes Trump as saying at a news conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis in the Rose Garden at the White House.

In fact, in the live broadcast on CNN, CNN contributor and Politico White House correspondent Tara Palmeri correctly noted that the president and administration do not feel the need to continue reaffirming Article 5 commitments to NATO allies because “they feel like they’ve already done that in the Rose Garden speech and prior talks.”

Media And Politicians Lie About Dana Loesch’s NRA Ad

At no point did Dana say any such thing in the video, but that didn’t stop Boing Boing and others from peddling this fake news.

‘You people are dangerous’! BoingBoing just straight-up LIED about Dana Loesch’s NRA ad

CNN’s Selective Edits ala Katie Couric

James O’Keefe pointed out one of the most overlooked aspects of his new ‘American Pravda’ series on CNN is how they selectively edited a Trump supporter’s comments.

Are Fake Followers Of News Agencies Fake News?

Ok, I’m not sure this technically belongs. If a news organization has a ton of fake followers, is that considered fake news? Did they pay for the followers? Are they just fake accounts? Is the audit even accurate? Nevertheless, I will include CNN’s large number of fake followers.

FAKE NEWS, FAKE FOLLOWERS: TwitterAudit Reports CNN Has 17 Million Fake Twitter Followers

According to TwitterAudit.com, nearly fifty percent of the followers on CNN’s verified Twitter account are fake.

Of CNN’s millions of followers on their verified Twitter account, over 17 million or 48 percent are fake, according to TwitterAudit.

It should be noted TwitterAudit.com is not considered the most accurate tool in the world.

I attempted to verify Breitbart’s claim, but keep in mind this is roughly two weeks after they did theirs. Here’s what I found:

MSNBC got a 67% when I did the audit. Fox got 58%, and Breitbart got 95%.

Does it mean anything? Probably not.

Not One, But Two Retractions

Vice Media Retracts Two Reports On Donald Trump, Disney

The two stories were taken down after the site realized they were full of “factual errors” and faulty sources, reports Variety.

“After a thorough investigation into the sourcing of two stories, ‘Here’s the Secret Backstage Trump Drama at Walt Disney World’s Hall of Presidents’ and ‘Behind the Scenes of Disney’s Donald Trump ‘Hall of Presidents’ Installation,’ and the identification of several factual errors, we have decided to retract both pieces,” Vice Media’s Motherboard editorial board said in a note.

Media Lies And Planned Parenthood

MSNBC Can’t Stop Lying About Planned Parenthood

“Data: Only 3% Of Planned Parenthood Services Go To Abortion Services,” the chyron incorrectly stated.

The true statistic, some estimate, is that abortion services provided are somewhere between 15 percent and 37 percent of Planned Parenthood’s overall services.

Can Moderate Muslims Catch A Break From Liberals?

Anti-Jihad Muslim Group Labeled As A ‘Hate Group’ By SPLC

Maajid Nawaz runs Quilliam, a London-based organization that aims to counter jihadism and extremism around the world. Nawaz, who considers himself a former Muslim radical (and still identifies as Muslim), is now fighting back against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has labeled his organization a “hate group” for its strong stance against radicalism. For the record, the SPLC also put Ayaan Hirsi Ali on their list. Nawaz has filed a lawsuit against SPLC and many are left wondering how Quilliam could have received such a label in the first place. He has admitted he feels like there already is a target on his head from certain people in the Muslim community.

Will The Fake Russia Stories Ever Stop?

Obviously, this was the biggest fake news story recently, but I hadn’t had the time to publish it on the site yet in its own post. Though it is discussed several times in the Daily Show Prep.

CNN deletes, retracts story linking Trump and Russia

On Thursday evening, CNN investigative reporter Thomas Frank published a potentially explosive report involving an investigation of a Russian investment fund with potential ties to several associates of President Donald Trump.

Trump’s tweets about Putin not going over well with Republicans
But by Friday night, the story was removed from CNN’s website and all links were scrubbed from the network’s social media accounts.

“That story did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted,” CNN said in an editors note posted in place of the story. “Links to the story have been disabled.”

Journalism Historian: CNN’s Malpractice Is ‘a Gift From Heaven for’ Trump

What was really astonishing is that the story was quickly retracted and the three journalists who have had a fair amount of success and prestige in their past were let go, were forced to quit, apparently. It was astonishing in that regard. Plus, the story was so poorly vetted internally before it was released, is another reason why it was, as I keep saying, jaw-dropping. It’s not the first time a major news organization has screwed up, but this is a recent example and it really does have the effect of feeding Donald Trump’s campaign about fake news. It’s a gift from heaven for him.

New York Times Sued

Sarah Palin rightfully sued the New York Times for defamation after publishing a debunked and retracted fake news editorial linking her to Gabby Giffords being shot.

That’s just 27 recent stories (past two weeks) that are fake news. I could have added more, and some breaking this week are already being vetted. Anyone who thinks fake news isn’t an issue, and that major media isn’t responsible is utterly clueless.

 

Surprise! Katie Couric LIED In Anti-Gun ‘Documentary’

Surprise! Katie Couric LIED In Anti-Gun ‘Documentary’

by | May 26, 2016 | Blog, Conspiracy, Media Bias

I rightfully, and masterfully, ridiculed #Katie Couric and her new #anti-gun ‘#documentary‘ a while ago on the show. She appeared on ‘The Late Show with Steven Colbert’ to peddle her new fiction movie called ‘#Under The Gun.’ From the clips she showed it was clear this movie was going to be an exercise in #selective editing, and leading questions.

[Tweet theme=”basic-full”]It was clear this movie was going to be an exercise in selective editing. http://snip.ly/b3yod @CaseyTheHost[/Tweet]


I also mocked her for stating that ‘the NRA only represents 5% of gun owners.’ No Katie, the #NRA represents 100% of gun owners. Only 5% are paying members.

[Tweet theme=”basic-full”]No Katie Couric, the NRA represents 100% of gun owners. Only 5% are paying members. http://snip.ly/b3yod Via @CaseyTheHost[/Tweet]

Plus, we already know her claim that 90% want #universal background checks is a #debunked #myth. When you ask the question in a specific way about private transfers, 53% of Americans disagree with having background checks of this nature.

Here we are a few weeks later, and we have already acquired the proof that Katie Couric’s ‘Under the Gun’ is about as accurate as the NY Times’ discredited hit piece on Trump.

Oops!

Of course, anyone who watches that scene absent the raw/true audio will know it is heavily edited. Confirmation bias, however, will make anti-Constitution advocate WANT to believe it wasn’t edited to push a false narrative.

The group Katie Couric LIES about in this scene are not happy campers.

The Virginia Citizens Defense League labeled the deceptively edited segment featured in the film “unbelievable and extremely unprofessional.” Philip Van Cleave, the organization’s president, said the editing was done deliberately to make it appear that league members didn’t have a response to Couric’s question.

“Katie Couric asked a key question during an #interview of some members of our organization,” he said. “She then intentionally removed their answers and spliced in nine seconds of some prior video of our members sitting quietly and not responding. Viewers are left with the misunderstanding that the members had no answer to her question.”

In all honesty, you guys should have known better. Maybe you did. Perhaps that’s why we have the raw audio.

There are many false claims in the movie that have been #exposed, but Katie Couric and the anti-Constitution lobby are all in using the Joseph Goebbels model of propaganda.

[Tweet theme=”basic-full”]Katie Couric and the anti-Constitution lobby are all in using the Joseph Goebbels model of propaganda. Via @CaseyTheHost http://snip.ly/b3yod[/Tweet]

 

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Bob Costas, Another Pasty White Guy Offended By Word Native Americans Aren’t Offended By

by | Oct 14, 2013 | Blog

#Bob Costas, a PC libtard, reared his ugly smugness again on Sunday.  He decided to school everyone who isn’t offended by the #name ‘#Redskins‘ on why they are wrong … including Native Americans.

After starting off telling everyone that the vast majority of Native Americans aren’t offended by the name ‘Redskins’ (and they aren’t), he went on to say that their opinion doesn’t matter, and that ‘Redskins’ is actually highly #offensive.  Apparently, Costas thinks Native Americans are so dumb and naive that they need him to protect their fragile psyche.  So he’s stepping up to be offended for them.

The only survey done on the subject that specifically asked Native Americans how they felt showed 90% didn’t think the name ‘Redskins’ was offensive.  As I illustrated recently, everyone except Native Americans are offended by this name.  Most notably, pasty white do-gooders like Costas.

I’ve also pointed out that in my many discussions on this topic, Native Americans believe that people like Costas are attempting to erase Native Americans from our culture, and they think it’s motivated by racial discrimination.

It’s hard to argue against the claim that people like Costas are #racist against Native Americans when he goes on national television and tells them that they are wrong for not being offended by something that only they have the authority to decide is offensive.

Black (not so funny) comedian W. Kamau Bell recently said that white people ‘can’t say what’s racist or not’ when it comes to blacks being offended.  Ok, if that’s the case, then whites, blacks, asians, etc. can’t say what’s racist or not when it comes to Native Americans. So … shut up about it.

Costas’ logic to support his argument was to make the point that if we go back in time (that would be the 1600’s btw), ‘Redskin’ was a derogatory term used to describe Native Americans.

So what?

Hoosier was a derogatory term used to describe people from Indiana, and now we wear that moniker with pride.  Retard and retarded are perfectly legitimate mechanical terms that society foolishly decided was offensive only recently.  Can we go back to just 10 years ago and reclaim retard’s legitimate definition like Costas is suggesting with Redskin?

How about if we reclaim the definition of faggot and fag while we are at it.  It originally had nothing to do with homosexuals, and isn’t used primarily to disparage them now anyway.  Yet we can’t call someone a fag without being accused of being a homophobe.  Even though the word is rarely used to describe homosexuals.

South Park explained all of this perfectly:

 

 

The professionally offended are destroying our society, culture, and language while stoking bigotry where none exist. It’s time to hold their feet to the fire.

 

UPDATE:

Mofo Politics has a petition to demand Costas change his offensive name.

 

 

The 45 Communist Goals

by | Jun 14, 2013 | Blog, Conspiracy

I’ve been talking about Cleon Skousen’s 45 Communist Goals for nearly a decade on the radio now.  Many hosts are just getting around to it.

Albert Herong, Jr., entered The Communist Goals into the Congressional Record, as follows: “… At Mrs. Nordman’s request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following “Current Communist Goals,” which she identifies as an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen:

45 COMMUNIST GOALS

  1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
  2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
  3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
  4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
  5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
  6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
  7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
  8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
  9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
  10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
  11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
  12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
  13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
  14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
  15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
  16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
  17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
  18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
  19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
  20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
  21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
  22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
  23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
  24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
  25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
  26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
  27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”
  28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
  29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
  30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
  31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
  32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
  33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
  34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
  35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
  36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
  37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
  38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
  39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
  40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
  41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
  42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.
  43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self- government.
  44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
  45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.
Surprise! Katie Couric LIED In Anti-Gun ‘Documentary’

Al-Awlaki Killing Was Perfectly Legal

by | Oct 4, 2011 | Blog, Conspiracy, Featured

The debate has raged for some days now … was the killing of al-Awlaki in Yemen illegal?

Rep. Ron Paul says it was, but he says everything is illegal.

There are two primary arguments alleging the illegality of al-Awlaki’s killing.

First, he was a US citizen, and as such, was due a trial.

Second, the US violated international law by assassinating him in Yemen.

Neither argument holds up, both morally or legally.

First I’ll address international law.

Neither the Hague Convention of 1899, or the Protocol Addition to the Geneva Convention of 1949 forbid al-Awlaki’s killing by international law.  Right off the get go, proponents of this argument are off to a bad start.  In fact, the international law community has often taken the stance that killing an adversary can often fall within the confines of international law.

Harvard Law addressed the issue a few years back.

The clauses that traditionally have been construed as prohibiting “targeted killings” are far from clear prohibitions. In the Hague Convention (II) with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land (29 July 1899), Article 23b states that it is prohibited “to kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army.” Treachery is not explicitly defined, and it can be argued that using missiles to attack a car in which a target is traveling, while brutal and having a high probability of injuring bystanders, does not fall within the purview of treachery. Similarly, targeted killings can be argued to fall outside the Protocol I Article 37 prohibition on killing, injuring, or capturing “an adversary by resort to perfidy”—described as “acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence.” Article 37 gives examples of perfidy including “the feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or surrender” and “the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status.”

Basically, you can’t ‘assassinate’ under false-flag circumstances.  No such circumstance existed with the al-Awlaki killing.  It should be noted that this provision addresses someone belonging to a hostile nation OR army. While al-Awlaki did not belong to a hostile nation, he did belong to a hostile army.  This is important later when I argue the relevance of his US citizenship.

In addition to this international law, the US has NO LAW forbidding foreign assassinations.  We do, however, have a policy of not undertaking assassinations.  Policy does not equal law.

The second component to this operation is that Yemen fully approved, and supported the killing of al-Awlaki. So no argument can be made that we violated the sovereignty of a foreign nation.

The other argument making its way around is that al-Awlaki’s killing was illegal because he was a US citizen. As such, an assassination order by the President of the United States would violate his constitutional right of due process.  It should also be noted that al-Awlaki was not the only American killed in the attack.

Al-Awlaki’s ties to terrorism are not in dispute, his actual influence is.  So can the president order his killing, or not?

8 U.S.C. § 1481 addresses the issue of US citizenship in situations like this.

(a) A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality –

(1) obtaining naturalization in a foreign state upon his own application or upon an application filed by a duly authorized agent, after having attained the age of eighteen years; or

(2) taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof, after having attained the age of eighteen
years;

The law also addresses taking up arms against the United States in section 7. Considering al-Awlaki’s Yemeni citizenship, which does not recognize dual-citizenship, and his taking up arms against the US, it would appear that he renounced his US citizenship long ago.

Section 7 automatically revokes his citizenship because of his terrorist activities, but requires capture and tribunal. Since he was in Yemen, we revert to international law which permits his killing in order to prevent a further loss of life.  More relevant is local Yemen law.  Again, they assisted in the killing of al-Awlaki.

Is his killing a gray area?  Only in the perpetually unrefined laws of US citizenship.  Laws that most Americans agree need to be revamped, but the law nonetheless.

The only component missing to classify al-Awlaki as a non-citizen appears to be a mere formality of choreographed theater that would only serve to satisfy the selfish needs of third party citizens, not the parties directly involved.  It’s pretty clear that al-Awlaki, the US, and Yemen were all on the same page.

Both al-Alwaki and Yemen agree that he is a citizen of Yemen.  The US agrees that he revoked his citizenship. Who are you to swoop in and negate those facts?

The only sources of outcry appear to come from the ignorant, and those with a vested interest in ideological pacifism.  Not from a position of morality or legality.

Ultimately, this is a debate that will fall upon opinion.  If you think al-Awlaki’s killing was illegal, you’ll likely never change your mind.  Same goes for those who think it was legally justified.  Each individual will have to decide for themselves if international law, US law, or Yemeni law should reign supreme.

Of course, you can always consider al-Awlaki’s wishes too.

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