Analyst's note:  Absolutely must read. Senator Rand Paul is taking a much needed public stand and in so doing is helping Americans to understand Mr. Obama's recent terrifying expansion policy that now includes the option of putting to death Americans in the United States without trial, without proper legal process, or without meaningful oversight.  Congress has passed no law specifically authorizing the premeditated, targeted killings of American citizens abroad, to say nothing of American citizens at home ... nor can they rightfully do so.  Having said this, we have the Eric Holder who currently heads our DoJ, who believes Barack Obama 'has authority to use drone strikes to kill Americans on US soil'

Can you be classified as a "domestic terrorist" because you disagree with the government?  This is more of a possibility than you may think.  As of this date, here is the U.S. Department of Justice definition of terrorism as promulgated in the National Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training material:

"The unlawful  use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."

What about peaceful groups that dissent from government policy ... but the government now deems their views or words to be now be "unlawful?"

We already have Mr. Obama who recently signed into law a bill that allow the Secret Service the ability to decide where Americans can and can not exercise their freedom of speech.  Anywhere the SS is working (not just guarding the President, but candidates, Washington DC - where they are ever present) they can decide if you may speak out against the governments policies.  The penalty? A FELONY!  Jail for a year. What ever happened to America? Why would Congress (yes, even the Republican House) agree to anti-Constitutional laws? They are sworn to uphold the Constitution, not to legislate against it at will.

People, we are losing our freedom, we are losing our rights! Doesn't anyone out there care????  These people all need to be impeached or voted out or somehow restrained from violating the Supreme Law of the land.  See FREE SPEECH NOW A FELONY ? Obama gives Secret Service Power to Limit Free Speech

Our government now treats copyright infringers as terrorists.  SWAT teams have been deployed against them. See this, this, this and this.

You will also want to consider Obama DHS Purchases 2,700 Light-Armored Tanks to Go With Their 1.6 Billion Bullet Stockpile and My medical appointment....related to guns---worth the read~~!!!

We have complained unceasingly about the lack of proper definition in this so called "War on Terrorism."  Why does our gov't continue to not name our enemy, yet we fixated on finding the "terrorist?"   Yet, we know who the enemy is!  Don't miss the videos embedded in this posting.  Knowing that our enemy is operating inside our own gov't, I absolutely don't rule out anything. See Napolitano Announces Expansion of Gestapo Zones from Airports to Malls and Hotels and Obama Places Foreign Cops Operating Inside U.S. Above U.S. Constitution along with Even Congress Begins to Understand that Muslim Brotherhood is advising Obama

We have further progress by the Feds to turn local police into an arm of the federal gestapo.  With money, gifts, and training the DHS is ingratiating themselves to our state and local police agencies.  When push comes to shove we can expect the hand of Big Government to be next door now.  This blurring of boundaries between federal and state law enforcement is purposeful and insidious. Everyone knows that the laws each enforce are specific to either the federal or to the State criminal code and authority does not allow one to enforce the other!  Witness the commotion about Arizona trying to enforce federal immigration law.  Do you want the feds to enforce and police local traffic laws, how about murder, theft, and other violations of State statute?  Let it blur and see how many brown shirts we will have in our neighborhoods!  There is a reason that local police are under LOCAL control.... and it needs to stay that way. See Homeland Security Uses Local Police to Set Up Surveillance Buffer Zones

The DHS, DoS & Secret Service no longer know how to vet "foreign designated terrorist organizations" OR follow the laws of this sovereign nation ... see DHS Leader: Expect more members of terrorist organizations to visit US.

We have military leadership who refused artillery support to troops engaged in a fierce battle against the enemy which left many American troops killed in Afghanistan. Military leaders have placed too many constraints on our warriors. They have implemented rules of engagement that only make sense to those working behind closed doors. See Secret genocide against American veterans

Think carefully .... 

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[....] There are a few things about this debate worth considering. One is that we are too much focused on the instrument of these killings rather than on the moral and political context of them. “Drone” is a scary-sounding word, and the prospect of remote-control killings via robots circling invisibly overhead is of course ominous. But the technological means here are of no particular importance or interest — we could as easily be talking about slitting throats, tossing hand grenades through windows, or any other old-fashioned means of ending a life. The question is not about using unmanned aircraft to carry out killings, but about drawing up lists of Americans greenlit for assassination and then acting upon them, first abroad and now, according to Attorney General Eric Holder, at home, if the president judges doing so to be necessary.

We are suffering from the conflation of rhetoric and reality. Our “War on Terror” is not a war in any conventional sense of the word, and our insistence that in this war the “battlefield is everywhere” takes literally a phrase that is not literally true. Al-Qaeda and its sympathizers are savages who will kill when and where they can; they could strike anywhere, but it does not follow that everywhere is therefore a field of battle subject to the law of war. The Museum of Modern Art and the Mall of America might be possible targets for terrorists, but martial law is not in effect in those locations, nor should it be. If John Walker Lindh had been killed during a shootout at Tora Bora or during the prison uprising at Qala-i-Jangi, that would have been of no special concern. There is no question that killing an American citizen under arms in the course of battlefield combat is easily within the bounds of acceptable national-defense action.

But that is not the question before us. Instead, we are faced with an arrangement by which the president may designate any American, at home or abroad, as an “enemy combatant,” and place him on a list of people to be killed — not in the course of combat, but in targeted operations indistinguishable from assassinations. The legal justification for this is derived from the penumbras of the 2006 Military Commissions Act — but Congress has passed no law specifically authorizing the premeditated, targeted killings of American citizens abroad, to say nothing of American citizens at home. I very much doubt that such a law could pass Congress, even as defective and unreliable as our Congress can be. Passing such a law would not make these killings any less problematic, but it would introduce a much-needed balance-of-powers element to the situation.

Our definition of “enemy combatant” is terrifyingly elastic. Far from being limited to armed men carrying out acts of violence, it stretches to cover men such as Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda propagandist known, somewhat ridiculously, as “the bin Laden of the Internet.” Mr. al-Awlaki was probably guilty of treason and other serious crimes, but the Constitution contains specific provisions and standards for treason cases, which do not include assassination. Odious as he was, Mr. al-Awlaki came to the attention of our shockingly incompetent national-security administrators when, having been feted at the Pentagon and invited to offer prayers at the Capitol, he turned out to be a sympathizer with and encourager of Islamist terrorism. He blogged, he preached, he made propaganda videos — and that is what put him in the crosshairs. Government officials say there is more to the story, but that “more” is to be found only in classified documents, which makes real oversight — the kind exercised by informed citizens — all but impossible.

[....] Senator Paul is right to take this opportunity to, as somebody once put it, stand athwart, yelling “Stop!” Senator Ted Cruz and others are right to encourage him in this. If your government can put you to death without trial — not on the field of battle, but at breakfast — then you are not a citizen at all: You are a subject. And Americans were not born to be subjects.