Current TV’s John Fugelsang talks with Scott Horton, lecturer at Columbia Law School, and Medea Benjamin, co-founder of both CODEPINK and the human rights organization Global Exchange, about a Justice Department memo obtained by NBC News that outlines some of the legal justifications for Obama’s “targeted killing” drone program. Of particular note in the memo is the rationale it offers for killing American citizens abroad when they are suspected terrorists.
“The secrecy issue is ultimately a bigger issue than the underlying legal interpretation and question of presidential authority,” Horton says. “The notion that the administration can have a secret understanding of the law — what the law is and how it applies — is really offensive. Our nation was founded on the notion that the law is for all to know and when the administration adopts a legal view, that’s to be checked.”
