Right to Due Process

Gene Healy of Cato writes a good piece on the attack on the Constitutional rights of American citizens in the Obama administration’s justifications (or lack thereof) for drone killings of Americans.  From the article (click here for the entire piece):

Legal scholar Ryan Alford observes that the 13th century marks “the last time when the executive branch of any country governed by the common law had asserted that it was legal to kill a citizen on the basis of an executive order.” Obama’s “executive death warrant” is more than a breach of the Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantee, he argues, it’s an affront to the entire Anglo-American constitutional order.

I don’t see how members of either party can be comfortable with this claim of power without justification – all in the name of “it’s classified.”  In other words, the Obama administration is violating the Constitution and, when they are called on the carpet for it, telling the American people and the other branches of the government “you’ll just have to trust us.”  Oh, and for all those who make the “war time” arguments?  Well, according to the President’s State of the Union address, we’ll keep fighting even if we remove every trace of al-Qaeda from the map.  So when exactly is a non-war-time?  I can’t imagine we’ll ever see that time again if we continue electing similar Presidents.