Dead Until Proven Guilty: U. S. Assassination of U. S. Citizens

When Ted Koppel began Nightline over 30 years ago, he could not have imagined today's (or tonight's) version with host Terry Moron, or is that Moran, who offers a newsy feel to an endless supply of nothing stories that aren't quite titillating enough for hosts of Entertainment Tonight.  And even the real stories they cover, including the latest assassinations of American citizens abroad, without the burdensome benefit of capture and trial, are done so with the tepid empty-headedness that we have come to expect from the corporate media in general. 

Night before last ABC offered a breathless digitally-enhanced animated recreation of the digitally-enhanced distance dusting of the two citizens in question, which was followed by Moron's puff-ball interview with the increasingly-vapid and increasingly-youthful and ever-glamorous Christiane Amanpour (at right), whose enthusiasm could not be contained for the fact that Obama has been even more heedless than W. in carrying out this facet of the our terrrorist war on terror.  So much for the Constitution and responsible journalism.

To ABC's credit, they do have a story by Jake Tapper at the Nightline site, which includes this quote from Gleen Greenwald:

Writing in Salon today, Glenn Greenwald writes, “What’s most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar (‘No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law’), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What’s most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government’s new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government. Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President’s ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki — including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry’s execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists — criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed.”