State Department Reportedly Confiscates Dissident Journalist’s Passport Extrajudicially

What else would you expect from the worldwide champion of anarcho-tyranny, which simultaneously congratulates itself for leading the global “rules-based order” and trumps up fake charges to prosecute its chief political rival?

          Related: What Is Anarcho-Tyranny and Are We Living in It?

Via Newsweek (emphasis added):

“Ritter, a former United Nations Special Commission weapons inspector, U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer, and a convicted sex offender, told Russian state-run news agency Tass on Tuesday that he was removed from a flight from New York to Istanbul. He said he planned to travel to Russia to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

He claimed authorities offered no explanation for preventing him from traveling, but that they said they were following instructions from the U.S. State Department…

‘Due to privacy considerations, we cannot share information about the passport status of private U.S. citizens without their consent,’ a State Department spokesperson told Newsweek.

‘There are situations where a U.S. passport may be revoked.  These include, but are not limited to, laws and regulations affecting passport usage by individuals with active warrants or criminal records, fraud concerns, tax debt, and child support arrears,’ the spokesperson added.”

Okay, Mr. Spokesperson, but what is the justification here?

Where is the due process?

The excuse that they can’t share passport information of a citizen without his permission is nullified by the fact that the private citizen in this case, Scott Ritter, was the one who publicly made the allegation.

The Ritter treatment is by no means an aberration.

Via Yale Law Journal (emphasis added):

“On June 22, 2013, Edward J. Snowden, a Hawaii-based computer specialist and contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), had his passport revoked by the United States State Department. While working for the NSA, Snowden had secretly downloaded classified documents detailing NSA surveillance operations. By May 20, 2013, Snowden had left Hawaii for Hong Kong, where he started releasing the top-secret material in his possession to the press.

On June 14, the U.S. Justice Department filed criminal charges against Snowden in federal district court. The following day, the Justice Department formally requested that Hong Kong authorities issue a provisional arrest warrant for Snowden. Eight days later, on the very morning—Hong Kong time—that his passport was revoked, Mr. Snowden was able to board a flight to Moscow. He remained in Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport’s transit zone until August 1, 2013, when Russian authorities granted him a one-year temporary asylum along with an identity document.

The State Department reaffirmed that Snowden remained an American citizen. However, according to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Snowden only remained eligible for a ‘limited validity passport good for direct return to the United States.’ The State Department had thus effectively voided Snowden’s U.S. passport. Only if and when he decides to return to the United States will the State Department grant him an official document permitting his return to the U.S.; it will not grant him a passport of the common kind, which allows a U.S. citizen to remain abroad.

Snowden’s is not the only passport of an American citizen that the U.S. State Department has recently revoked. According to the Washington Post, the State Department revoked the passports of a few dozen—if not a hundred—Yemeni Americans after arguing that because these individuals were illegally naturalized, their passports were also obtained illegally.

From an analysis of historical and legal precedents, it seems clear that the State Department has acted in violation of the Constitution in each of these cases.”

You can bet your bottom dollar that the sellout cowards who pass as journalists at the State Department briefing today won’t be asking about this, just as they didn’t yesterday.

As far as the corporate state media, vanguard of sacred Democracy™, is concerned, some gothic cunt over at The Daily Beast thinks it’s super awesome and worth celebrating that the government can arbitrarily restrict American citizens’ ability to travel with no due process.

Because, obviously, the proper role of the media in a free society is to blindly support state authoritarianism when it violates civil liberties.

Like, totally, riiight [upward Valley girl voice inflection that all of these liberal retards do]?

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

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