Napolitano: Obama 'Shredding the Constitution'

Saturday, October 22, 2011 06:41 PM

By: Martin Gould and Ashley Martella

President Barack Obama is shredding the U.S. Constitution faster than any of the 42 men who preceded him in office, according to Fox News judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano, author of the brand new "It is Dangerous to be Right when the Government is Wrong."

It is so bad he should be impeached over the murder of American terror suspect Anwar al-Awlaki – and if Congress won’t take that action, he should be indicted once he is out of office.

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, Napolitano said it doesn’t matter that Awlaki was probably guilty – the fact is he was a U.S. citizen and the Constitution outlaws his killing without due process.

“We live in a time in which the government recognizes no limits on its own power,” he said. “It doesn’t recognize the natural law. It doesn’t recognize the federal law. It doesn’t recognize the Constitution.

“The president in the past couple of weeks became judge, jury and executioner for a very hated and probably guilty individual. But the Constitution says no person shall be denied life, liberty or property –much less an American which this guy was – without due process of law.”

“The killing of an American is unforgiveable under the Constitution and it is an impeachable offence and the president, if not being impeached, should be indicted for it after he leaves office.”

Napolitano hosts the libertarian show Freedom Watch on the Fox Business Channel. His sixth book on human freedom, “It is Dangerous to be Right when the Government is Wrong,” was released on Tuesday. Its title comes from a quotation attributed to 18th Century French civil libertarian Voltaire.

In the interview, the judge admitted that Obama is not the first president to undermine the Constitution. “I have never hesitated to attack the administration of George W. Bush,” he said. “In fact I have argued in this book and elsewhere that the Patriot Act is the most abominable Congressional assault on personal freedom since the Alien and Sedition Acts which were enacted in the late 1700s.

“The Obama administration, notwithstanding the president’s lofty words as a candidate and even as president, has actually ratcheted up the police state; has ratcheted up the assault on personal liberties.”

Napolitano said that shortly after 9/11, he and colleagues at Fox debated whether a president could kill an American who was a danger to national security. “When I posed that question, we all laughed, saying this could never happen, this is the United States of America, we have the Constitution. Now it happens and nobody does anything about it.

“I remember arguing, could the president start a war on his own? And the answer was no, of course not, the Constitution says only the Congress can declare war. Well, we’re in Libya and the Congress never declared it.

“The president is shredding the Constitution more so than George W. Bush did. It’s not only this president who does it, but he is doing it in a more in-your-face, more obvious and, if I may, more boastful way.”

Napolitano, a former superior court judge in New Jersey, claimed the assault on Americans’ freedoms – “real serious heavy-duty nanny-state regulation,” – started in earnest under Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in the early 20th Century.

“That’s when the administrative state begins. That’s when the federal government creates administrative agencies that are neither fish nor fowl – they are not in the executive branch and they are not in the legislative branch. They don’t run for office but they acquire power through appointment, they survive from one president to the next.

“The administrative agencies began regulating private behavior and it started about 100 years ago. Coincidentally that’s also when the Federal Reserve and when the Income Tax started.”

He said one of the most important tests of the Constitution will be decided by the Supreme Court this year in the Antoine Jones case, where police attached a GPS device to a suspected drug dealer’s car to track his movements.

“The government claims it can come on to your property and open your garage door and go into your garage and open up your car and put a GPS tracking device in there if you don’t carry a cellphone. Can the government do that? Answer: The Supreme Court will tell us in a couple of months. In the interim, the government does this.”

Napolitano, like many libertarians, said he has sympathy for many of the causes of the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

“They have a legitimate complaint that their future in the economic world is grim. It is grim because the government has spent the future’s money today and has mortgaged the future by printing cash and borrowing against the future. It is grim because the government fights wars of opportunity.

“When they say end the Fed and end the wars, I am with them,” he said. “But when they say take from the rich and give to those who don’t have it, the Constitution is supposed to prevent that from happening.

“The political side of this is just as dangerous,” he added. “The political side of this is that labor unions and hard left organizations and entities of the Democratic National Committee are going to co-opt those young people and take over the message.”


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