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Obama the Assassin Kills Two Americans With Severe Injuries to the 5th Amendment; Joshua Kors on Effective New Therapies for Epilepsy

Vince Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, returns to comment on the drone assault that killed two Americans in Yemen, with no due process.  Journalist Joshua Kors is back, with his personal experiences with epilepsy and new therapies that are working for him. 

Warren relates that CCR sued the Obama administration on behalf of the father of Anwar al-Awlaki, but the case was thrown out on procedural grounds.  The targeted killing of al-Awlaki and another American, Samir Khan on September 30 in Yemen moves the US into unconstitutional and uncharted waters, and is based on unproven assertions that link al-Awlaki to the underwear bomber, the defused Times Square bomber, and the plot to send explosive ink cartridges to Jewish targets in Chicago.  The low threshhold of “evidence” and lack of any legal process is stunning, while the US media and even most “liberals” cheer this hit, with little apparent concern that a future president could target anyone–even an American citizen located inside our country.  PBC cites Salman Rushdie’s casual remark on Bill Maher’s show, that these dead men “gave up some of their rights” when they advocated for al Qaeda from Yemen;  Rushdie was, of course, the target of a fatwah calling for his assassination a few years ago.  Warren also updates us on a settlement just announced in the case brought by Amy Goodman and her staffers for abusive police treatment at the GOP convention in 2008 in St. Paul, and on the appeal of the case related to three Guantanamo inmates who died on the same night in June, 2006 at a black site just outside the Gitmo compound.  Visit CCR’s website here.

Correction:  Your humble host misstated the date of the attack in Yemen in the early part of the interview; it was September 30, not October 1.

At 44:42, Joshua Kors of The Nation returns to talk about his life with epilepsy, and how he has been immensley helped by Donna Andrews and Joel Reiter.  Kors has deftly exposed the denial of health care to thousands of veterans who were injured in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now wants to share with others how the methods of Andrews/Reiter have empowered him to identify the “aura” and other symptons that precede a seizure.  Kors is speaking at a conference in Toronto in mid-October, and the conference website has full details.  You can also read his personal story at his own site.  I learned a lot about epilepsy, its triggers and treatment in this conversation, and hope you will share it with friends and family who are touched by epilepsy.