Senator Rand Paul asked the Attorney General if the President has the authority to order drone strikes on US Citizens, on US Soil without a trial. Holder's response..."yeah, kind of". You can read the entire letter below if you like. 

The gist of Holder's argument is that things can get so crazy so quickly, that in theory,  the President would have no choice. And if that doesn't make your colon quiver, let me explain why it should.

The AG has set this up so that the President can take out anyone he wants. I'll give you an example. The President receives info on a group of American's who hate this country and have acquired a dirty bomb they're going to drive to DC and kill everyone in the Capital. Time is of the essence and if authorities try to apprehend them once they got near major population centers the bomb could kill thousands. We have to diffuse the threat immediately before the group breaks camp in the sparsely populated area 3 miles north east of the town of Ridgeway SC.

Shortly after the camp is destroyed the President would go on TV and thank the tireless efforts of the FBI, CIA and US military to work together against homegrown terrorists. Thanks to their hard work Amercan's can feel safer and terrorists know that we are watching you.

But were they really terrorists? Let's not pretend like the CIA has never made intelligence mistakes. And if you want to be synical you can contemplate the fact that the current Homeland Security Director Janet Napolatano considers people like you a potential terrorist. I say people like you because she listed "people who listen to talk radio"in the suspicious category. Also she throws in returning veterans. And classifies Extreme Right-Wing: groups as people that believe that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack. So when government officials say things, like we need to limit access to ammo, if you perceive that as an attack on your way of life, then you go on the naughty list. How about when they raise taxes? How about when they ban prayer in public? Those are just a few things that have happened over the past few years and if you agree with them then you're in the clear. If you openly say these are limiting my freedoms that were assured to all American's by the Constitution then you go on the naughty list. And if you get too naughty now, the Attorney General is attempting to provide the President legal cover to drone you. And who knows what the next administration will bring? It could be the opposite of this one and list as potential terrorists people who like MSNBC, wish that government would do more to "level the playing field" and feel like they're less safe with average citizens carrying weapons.

Here's what I know. This country runs better than most because of checks and balances. They can be frustrating because it seems to take forever to get anything accomplished, but it prevents us from having one person decide to wipe out a group of deer hunters who were e-mailing each other about looking forward to blowing out of the capital city to bag some deer and get dirty over the weekend. "It's going to be the bomb"! 

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty".

Thomas Jefferson

To kill any American legally should be impossible for one man to decide absent visual proof that the citizen is seconds away from killing another. We become less safe the minute we turn that kind of power over to an individual in the hopes that they will make us safer. 

Those that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. 

Benjamin Franklin

The bigger problem I fear is most American's aren't even aware of these shifting policies. 

Freedom is lost gradually from an uninterested, uninformed, and uninvolved people. ... Thomas Jefferson