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"Laws, even when it is unclear how they will be enforced, are incredibly important," she said. "They are a statement of a country's values and they have a teaching effect. Laws that validate discrimination, as we have seen in Russia, can lead to an increase in violence and harassment. This is particularly true when authorities don't act to protect all of their citizens and when they fail to investigate and prosecute crimes committed by or against particular groups."
"[I]f the individual is no longer to be sovereign, if the police can pick him up whenever they do not like the cut of his jib, if they can 'seize' and 'search' him in their discretion, we enter a new regime. The decision to enter it should be made only after a full debate by the people of this country." - U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
While capturing al Awlaki would have been preferable, the memo states that "we also understand that an operation by either agency to capture al-Aulaqi in Yemen would be infeasible at this time."The memo, prepared by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, says that because the U.S. government considered al Awlaki to be an "operational leader" of an "enemy force," it would be legal for the CIA to attack him with a drone "as part of the United States' ongoing non-international armed conflict with al Qaeda," even though he was a U.S. citizen.
The memo also says the killing of al Awlaki by U.S. military forces would be legal under an authorization for the use of U.S. military force approved by Congress following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
Comment: Saudi Arabia is only one of several countries where homosexual acts are illegal and punishable by execution. Russia's recent anti-gay law has essentially legalized homophobic violence, emboldening right-wingers to step up attacks on gays through groups known as Occupy Gerontophilia and Occupy Paedophilia. Russian diplomats say discrimination does not exist in Russia because the country's constitution forbids it (wishful thinkers, those diplomats!). Regardless of who received the "call-out" by the State Department, the spinning moral compass and "two-faced" choice of singling out Russia, while giving a pass to more egregious Saudi Arabia, smacks of blatant political posturing at the expense of humanity and their rights.