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[quote=TheManWithAUsername][quote=Anonymous]I am not decided on this issue.  But a few points to address here IMO:

1.  Your research comment implies that we should be evaluating the details of the case to decide whether the killing was justified.  Jeff and the ACLU argue that due process is the required method by which we determine the facts.[/quote]
Actually, I meant that in part and something more fundamental. I realize that Jeff reviewed his credentials in response to a hostile question about them. More fundamentally, I meant researching enough to know anything at all about this.

Personally, I follow almost nothing about the day-to-day of the wars and, frankly, about individual guys with Middle-Eastern-sounding names being killed overseas. There are so many terrible things going on now - i.e., terrible things to which our government has been contributing for several years - that a few individual deaths really don't get my attention until a very big deal is made about it.

These don't grab my attention b/c of the number of possible victims but also b/c, yes, I do trust the executive - even one like Bush - a bit more with that specific decision. I am less inclined to believe that decision making in that area (individual assassination of someone involved with terrorism in some way) is corrupt, though it may still be wrong.

I realize how screwy it is to essentially write something like that off, but again, I just don't have it in me to worry about every possible injustice. And I think the left too often gets caught up in mostly symbolic issues, or issues primarily of principle. E.g., the number of wrongly convicted people executed last year - whatever it is - is incomparably smaller than the number of lives ruined by our internal economic policies.

On the finer point of research - researching whether an individual had it coming, I agree that this is illegal - as I said, even had there been an indictment. I think the government has screwed up by not filling this legal gap (or maybe they realized something I haven't thought of about why it would actually make it more awkward for them). But in the absence of that, yeah, I do think it makes a difference whether we know that he's doing something really terrible. In some cases, I'm OK with the executive having him killed, then, ideally, immediately publicly airing the facts and acting to fill the legal hole for next time.

I'll emphasize, though, that my opinions are far from firm on this. I think these are tough questions.

[quote=Anonymous]2.  Regarding the slippery slope, precedent is very powerful in determining the limits on presidential power.  If we look for example at the War Powers Resolution and its constraint on the president, we have only a handful of cases to use as a guide.  When someone says Obama failed to invoke war powers for Libya, historians will point to Clinton and Kosovo to say that it is not required in this type of case.[/quote]
I'm not saying there's no theoretical slippery slope; I think Jeff's statement that our president has unilaterally decided which American citizens can be murdered is correct, and is an appropriate comment. I mentioned the history because the fact is that this kind of thing doesn't seem to be increasing in frequency, and they don't seem to be seeking increasingly broad powers (to my uneducated eye).[/quote]

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