Obama's Executive Death Warrants | Cato Institute

Obama's Executive Death Warrants | Cato Institute: "Khan and Awlaki senior probably weren’t any great loss to humanity, but there’s an important matter of principle here: Can a president really serve as judge, jury and executioner over any American he deems a security threat?"

"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."

"It seems it’s perfectly legal for the president to deem you a terrorist and vaporize you with a drone. But there’s one thing that he can never do: penalize you for failure to purchase health insurance. That would be tyrannical, you see."