Drone Despotism

All the world is currently ablaze with the news that the Obama Administration, wait for it, has claimed the legal authority to be the judge, jury, and drone executioner for pretty much anyone aboard Spaceship Earth.  Love, and now the entire Globe, is a battlefield, and a battlefield upon which the President, and his band of merry men, gather together on 'Terror Tuesday' to plot out which of our enemies, American Citizens or not, are due to eat hellfire from on high.

Glenn Greenwald gives it the thorough treatment.

It is somewhat baffling to me that there's been such an explosion of incredulity regarding the DOJ's memo.  This has been going on for at least three years, and general Executive overreach has been occurring since shortly after September 11th.  We have known this is happening since the Obama Administration decided to unilaterally kill Anwar Al-Awlaki and his sixteen year old son in 2010.  They were dual-citizenship Americans.  Sure, Al-Awlaki wasn't the U.S.' biggest fan, and he was an inciter of Jihadi violence, but I'm not sure that justifies the lack of Due Process for both he and his son.  Actually, I'm fairly sure given contemporary precedents of American jurisprudence that is was a shocking move toward an almost unlimited Executive power to kill.

But, what of it?  These news stories will cycle through this week, there will be some outrage, both real and fake, and then most of the country will forget about it while CNN and their ilk blast their most pressing graphical assaults on our collective consciousness and we're threatened with going over the fiscal cliff or falling into the pit of deficit despair.

There seemed to be a lot more outright rage when we were learning that the Bush II administration had decided that they could wiretap us without warrants, torture whoever they wished under the pretense of enhanced interrogation techniques (as Orwellian a phrase can be), and indefinitely detain anyone with brown skin and a different opinion.  However, today - the Obama Administration's DOJ is asserting legal doctrine for the right to assassinate whomever they please, be they American or not, wherever they please, be it a current war-zone or not, and I don't believe we're seeing near the same outrage.

This is the slipperiest of slopes; the kind that goes right to a bottom of tyrannical leadership and a complete negation of due process.  It's been referred to as "chilling" by multiple bloggers/talking heads, but it seems like more and more governmental action (in the realm of civil liberties) is chilling.  So much so, that maybe "chilling" is losing some of its meaning.  Either way, the worldview of this administration sees it as "legal, ethical, and wise".  Just ask Jay Carney.