Obama & Holder Declaration Even Scares Dick Polman

You know Obama overstepped his bounds when even the normally compliant Dick Polman is concerned about the administration's actions:

Bear with me while I quote from The Godfather - hey, doesn't everyone? - because this is really about how Barack Obama has been playing fast and loose with the Constitution.

Michael Corleone tells Kay that his dad, Vito, is really no different than "a senator or a president." Kay tells Michael that he's being naive, because "senators and presidents don't have men killed."

To which Michael says, "Oh. Who's being naive, Kay?"

You tell her, Michael! Because, as the U.S. attorney general made clear the other day - in a speech that got little play in the media, thanks to the Republican primaries - Obama is the first president to claim the legal authority to whack U.S. citizens, to act as judge, jury, and executioner without a shred of transparency or public accountability.

This issue flared briefly last fall after Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born, American-educated radical Muslim cleric, was lit up in Yemen by one of Obama's drones. Another American was killed in the attack, and, two weeks later, Awlaki's 16-year-old son, also an American citizen, was taken out in another attack. The Obama team refused to say why Awlaki warranted summary execution. It refused to discuss whether he was an imminent threat, or the criteria that prompted Obama to OK the hit. It appears that the Justice Department supplied a legal rationale in writing, but to this day the administration refuses to confirm or deny the existence of such a memo.

Aside from the lame Godfather reference, the underlying point that Eric Holder has now given every succeeding president the authority to assassinate American citizens at his whim is scary. This is stretching the limits of government authority to levels never imagined by any US leader and one in which Dick Cheney would have been horrified by.

When you've lost uber-liberal Dick Polman and he says so on the op/ed pages of the Inquirer, you've lost everyone.