Attorney General Eric Holder has finally come forward to explain how it's legal under certain circumstances for the President to order the killing of a US citizen, and it isn't very pretty. For the argumentation and a learned critique, I'll refer you to today's series of posts by EmptyWheel, starting maybe with this one, which lays out Holder's claim that the "due process" promised in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments doesn't necessarily need to be a judicial process, and then methodically demolishes it.
This frail and unfortunate effort at Jesuitical casuistry comes just as I'm arriving at peak position in the cycle of Obama fandom, which waxes and wanes for each of us according to factors variously seasonal and unpredictable, not all of which have been successfully identified, but does have something to do with what the President actually does, and the long trajectory across which his plans come to a sometimes surprising fruition.
One thing that has had me gasping with Obama-amazement is his skill in managing the Israel-Iran confrontation without openly hurting anybody's feelings; as Binyamin Netanyahu barks and blusters his way through his Washington engagements, Iran and the Powers decide to resume negotiations, and Iran sends out one of those "signals" by reversing the death sentence against another American "spy", Amir Mirzaei Hekmati.
And then it starts to become clear that the Affordable Care Act, bless its ambivalent heart, is really driving a stake through the heart of the vampire health insurance industry, in that unbearably gradual Obama tempo (in this metaphor, the rules on medical loss ratio would count as daylight, and preventive care without copays is garlic). Denying coverage has been their big engine of profit, and if they can't do it they are going to die, and a semi-public system built out of those exchanges, the nonprofit private insurers, and Medicare is going to rise, almost of its own accord, to take their place.
And then the Justice Department comes up with this stupid argument. Go figure. I can't write the post I wanted to write at all.
