12 thoughts on “Executive Power, 2010 Edition

  1. noting that this is an even more remarkable assertion than anything Bush ever claimed

    The emphasis is on “claimed”, as the underlying story specifies such “assassinations” were approved several times under Bush. Should we be surprised? The domestic police forces obviously have the right to kill US citizens and do so quite frequently. If we accept collateral damage as a necessary evil, at some point the victim will be a WASP and then we’ll have to seriously re-evaluate our policies.Report

    1. If my government is going to have a policy of killing, like, whomever it wants, I’d hope it has the decency to keep such a policy double-secret.

      Once it makes the policy official, we’ll have to deal with policy creep.Report

  2. Transplanted Lawyer: Where’s the outrage? How naive, dude.
    It’s different for Democrats! Think FDR’s vacation facilities for Japanese-Americans during the war, Woodrow Wilson’s arrests of American citizens, Vietnam, Korea, and now Dear Leader’s $4 Trillion dollar daficet!Report

    1. Of course it’s different for Democrats. Criticizing your own party (from the left) is considered disloyal, and hell will freeze over before Republicans oppose expansions of executive security powers. When Republicans are in the more left-wing Democrats are in a better position to get some press coverage of their criticism – but who bothers following Glenn Greenwald now? The media only cares about criticism from the right, whose only issue in this realm is that Obama hasn’t claimed enough unchecked executive power.Report

  3. They just keep sliding farther down that slippery slope. It was only a matter of time before this claim was made.

    Americans need to watch every single move their government makes, and demand retractions of statements such as this.Report

  4. My answer has been to spend six years asking Republicans, “How will you feel when President Hillary Clinton claims these powers for her administration?” and now to ask the Democrats in my workplace, “How will you feel when President Jeb Bush claims these powers for his administration?”Report

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