Assassinating American citizens

When it comes to civil liberties,Kevin Drum writes that’s the one area where he feels “betrayed” by Obama. Case in point: the White House’s assertion that it has the right to hunt and kill American terrorists, the same as it would your typical Al Qaeda operative in the hills of Waziristan.

Morally, I think the White House is on solid ground, but it’s not hard to see why some procedural safeguards might be a good idea. Someone must’ve suggested this already, but why not have a special court, like the FISA court, that can review classified intelligence which indicates that a citizen has become a terrorist?

There doesn’t seem to be much time pressure here. For example, it’s been public knowledge for several months that Anwar Al-Awlaki is both a citizen and a terrorist. That would’ve been plenty of time to go through a special court, which may only need a matter of days, if designed properly.