In 2011, President Obama ordered the killing of an American citizen living in Iraq. His name was Anwar al-Awlaki, and he was suspected of orchestrating or inspiring at least three terrorist attacks on American soil. Using an unmanned drone, the CIA vaporized al-Awlaki without submitting his case to a court or convicting him of any crime. In other words, Obama carried out an extra-judicial execution -- the kind of thing generally frowned upon under the rule of law (unless you are John Yoo.)
The problems with this sort of thing are obvious. If the president unilaterally can order the death of a US citizen, there is very little he cannot do. Our system of checks and balances, if it was designed to do anything, was intended to prevent this kind of drastic action being taken without any sort of due process. More specifically, there seem to be direct legal prohibitions on this sort of thing, as legal scholar Kevin Jon Heller pointed out even before the killing.
Recently, the Obama Administration released the memo written to the president explaining why this targeted assassination was legal and justified. Essentially, it invokes the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) and asserts that the government could "reasonably conclude" that al-Awlaki was a member of al Qaeda. The facts behind this conclusion are redacted, with the permission of a federal judge who ordered the release of the memo, so we can't know why they think he was a member of the one specific terrorist organization reached by the AUMF.
In other words, the executive gave itself permission to conduct an assassination based on information known only to the executive.
Where is Ted Cruz when you need him? Why is this OK when Obamacare is a crazy overreach?
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