Kucinich, one of the few liberals to speak up on assassinations of US citizens

Jeremy Scahill reports on Dennis Kucinich's view of the approved search to assassinate American-Yemeni citizen Anwar al-Awlaki.

Kucinich told The Nation he has sent several letters to the Obama administration raising questions about the potential unconstitutionality of the policy, as well as possible violations of international law, but has received no response. "With all the smart people that are in that administration, they've got to know the risks that they're taking here with violations of law," he says.

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He added: "The assassination policies vitiate the presumption of innocence and the government then becomes the investigator, policeman, prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner all in one. That raises the greatest questions with respect to our constitution and our democratic way of life."

Kucinich says the case of al-Awlaki is an attempt to make "a short-cut around the Constitution," saying, "Short-cuts often belie the deep and underlying questions around which nations rise and fall. We are really putting our nation in jeopardy by pursuing this kind of policy."

Scahill says that his attempts to reach Sen. Russ Feingold and Rep. Jan Schakowsky, two usually tough liberals that have re-election campaigns to think about in 2010, went unanswered. Amid this silence of the "progressives" in Congress, I give Kucinich credit for saying something, anything substantive in way of a rebuke of the president's actions. But it's really a shame that it's come to this. Where is the Democratic leadership? They are getting rolled by Obama and they don't mind at all. They've got cover to get reelected if Obama is still semi-popular. Why should they expend their energy on pushing him from the left? If America likes him, that's better for our preservation, they think.

But back to the thoughts on Awlaki, Kucinich said, "We are really putting our nation in jeopardy by pursuing this kind of policy." He referenced the intelligentsia that must know what kind of Pandora's Box they're opening. It's not just those big, bad Bush-Cheney deadenders anymore. It's also the sellouts (though that term could be disputed) in the Obama White House. They have dutifully continued the lawlessness of their predecessors.