Protesting Is Our Job

Back on October 3, Kevin Drum wrote this about the Awlaki assassination:

As it happens, I don't think the Awlaki precedent means that President Obama is going to go hog wild and start mowing down Americans overseas. I don't think that President Rick Perry would, either. But there are good and sound reasons that presidents are constrained in their ability to unilaterally kill U.S. citizens, regardless of where they live, and we allow these bright lines to be dimmed at our peril. Unfortunately, the war on terror has made poltroons out of every branch of government. The president hides behind the post-9/11 AUMF, using it as a shield to justify any action as long as it's plausibly targeted at al-Qaeda or something al-Qaeda-ish. Congress, which ought to pass a law that specifically spells out due process in cases like this, cowers in its chambers and declines to assert itself.
And the courts, as usual, throw up their hands whenever they hear the talismanic word "war" and declare themselves to have no responsibility.

If the president wants the power to kill U.S. citizens who aren't part of a recognized foreign army and haven't received a trial, he should propose a law that spells out when and how he can do it. Congress should debate it, and the courts should rule on its constitutionality. That's the rule of law. And regardless of whether I liked the law, I'd accept it if Congress passed it, the president signed it, and the Supreme Court declared it constitutional.

However, none of that has happened. The president's power in this sphere is, in practical terms, whatever he says it is. Nobody, not liberals or conservatives, not hawks or doves, should be happy with that state of affairs.

The history of American presidents and war powers is one long dirge of unconstitutional overstepping, from John Adams and the Alien and Sedition Acts through Teddy Roosevelt's seizure of the Phillipines, FDR interring innocent Japanese-Americans, LBJ lying about the Tonkin Gulf, Reagan and Bush I on Iran-Contra, Smirky and Iraq right up to Obama and the warren terra.

Because it is, of course, far worse than we thought.

Digby:

I haven't written anything about Charlie Savage's explosive revelation of an odious Obama Justice Department memo justifying the president's contention that he has the right to order the assassination of American citizens without even a nod to due process or congressional authority because it's just too much. It's particularly upsetting news that the memo was written by Marty Lederman, one of George W. Bush's harshest critics --- for doing exactly what he then did. For any of you who followed the details of the Yoo and Bybee memos of yore, this is profoundly depressing. I guess it takes on to know one.

You can get the whole sordid story from Greenwald. Oy.

We liberals let down our guard. Smirky/Darth were so mold-breakingly horrific that even the Wall-Street-worshipping repug-lite Obama was a relief.

We forgot that no one can be trusted with the power of that office. It is our job to supervise closely, to trust but verify, to challenge and protest and dissent.

Because in the end, the ones who take the oath to defend, preserve and protect the Constitution are not the ones who actually have to do the defending, preserving and protecting of the Constitution against the oath-takers.

That's our job.