tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19217611.post5966527278097703550..comments2024-03-28T09:13:04.373-04:00Comments on KIKO'S HOUSE: Obama 's Justification For Killing An American Abroad Doesn't FlyShaun Mullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14964214385216513188noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19217611.post-52065847274551957062014-06-24T17:21:40.915-04:002014-06-24T17:21:40.915-04:00It is rather striking that the law Obama opposed a...It is rather striking that the law Obama opposed and spoke against so stridently that authorized Bush's open-ended use of force has now so expansively embraced a variety of extrajudicial overreaches in his own term. And once again the Justice Dept. lawyers are called upon to mask it all with convoluted legalistic legerdemain.<br /><br />I should note, of course, that in your recitation on the 'public authority' exception, you blithely suggest that cops don't sometimes take out innocent bystanders while exercising the same right to execute escaping, 'presumed' felons. Actually, they do -- but the police review boards subsequently almost uniformly (pun intended) rule it a justifiable accident -- sort of collateral damage.<br /><br />But your larger point is surely well-taken -- that Obama's pendulum swing from seeking some middle-ground accommodation from Congress to now just out-and-out disregarding the legislative branch entirely in his march to post some points on his tenure's scoreboard has more than once left legal and constitutional niceties in the lurch. For a constitutional law prof, you'd think he'd know better, and he surely does but doesn't much care now.<br /><br />You'd think, with Obama's proud stance for the broadest reach of executive power, that Dick Cheney would be smartly saluting these masterstrokes, but noooooo.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com