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This week, an unclassified memorandum prepared by the Justice Department for members of Congress on the drone killings accidentally became public. The actual Office of Legal Counsel opinion which purports to authorize this program is still a wrongfully classified secret, and a federal judge just refused a FOIA request from the New York Times for release of the document.

This is exactly how the infamous torture memo came into existence during the Bush administration, a secret OLC opinion, the legal reasoning of which was so flimsy that it could not survive the light of day. So not only are we not supposed to question the murder of people in multiple countries, we are not even allowed to question the legal basis for it. It is sheer lunacy that LEGAL arguments need to be classified.

This is not a partisan issue. This is totally unacceptable regardless of who is the chief executive. And in particular, it is totally unacceptable for king "whatever his name happens to be this election cycle" to play judge, jury and executioner without the proper constitutional checks of congress and the courts.

The judge who refused to order the release of the legal opinion complained that the denial language of the FOIA statute was so vague and ambiguous it could authorize virtually anything. Apparently that is precisely the problem with the secret legal opinion itself, and it is intolerable. The legal opinion must be released to the PUBLIC, not it some back room for selected members of Congress only, and if it cannot be defended the drone killings must stop.

Stop The Drone Killings Action Page:
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1107.php

Please also check out the new People Lobby page on Facebook, for those who are already active over there:
http://www.facebook.com/peoplelobby

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible. Contributions to The People's Email Network are not tax-deductible for federal income tax purposes.