I'm not sure what's scarier here;

1. That the US willingly kills it's own citizens without trial

or

2. That you found a way to justify it and you're OK with it.

What a crazy, crazy place.

Did you read through the document - I took 45 minutes to parse it before commenting on it.

I'm pretty much a left-liberal-pro-individual rights person. 100% opposed to the death penalty for criminals that have been locked up. But, I still recognize that the United States is a nation at war, and has been so for the better part of 10 years. People die in wars. When Americans go join, and, indeed, lead enemy forces, and plan attacks on the United States - this document captures how and when they may be legally targeted.

Imagine a bank robber killing 5 people and holding 20 people hostage. As soon as he takes one step outside the police will shoot him on sight, WITHOUT any trial. It's the same thing basically.

It's not the same thing

They're targeting these guys for assasination for things they might do, or are suspected of doing in the past. It's not like they catch them in the actual act of committing terrorism.

So to satisfy your Strawman it would be the equivalent of finding a bank robber months after the robbery inside his house, and the police blowing it up with his family inside to get him. I don't think that would fly in any reasonable society

Edit: Interestingly here is a RL example that happened today, terrorists caught robbing banks, beaten by the cops then mugshots digitally altered so nobody would see the wounds http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/04/greece-police-lo...

That's not really the same thing. A better analogy is this: the police have credible intelligence that this person is connected to a ring of known bank robbers, and that ring is planning a robbery, so therefore they have the authority to kill him.

that sounds like thought-crime

Well, swap out "robbery" for "mass murder, usually using bombs in crowded civilian areas".

The police will shoot him on sight only within some very well defined circumstances such as:

  - Poses an immediate threat to the public or the officer

They shouldn't immediately shoot him if

  - there is no weapon in sight, or
  - the weapon is pointing at the ground etc.

In any civilised society there is no room for summary execution.

Obviously preserving human life trumps any other concerns, this includes the "bad guy's" life.

The policemen would be guilty of murder in any reasonable society.

If someone is threatening the lives of others as hostages, what degree of force is justified to stop them from taking those lives?

Not lethal. Lethal force is not necessary in any circumstance whatsoever.

I hope not, if the family of any criminal out there could get policemen jailed for doing their job, there soon won't be much policemen left.

A policeman's job is to enforce the law, not kill criminals. In this case that means arresting the bank robber so he can be brought to trial. If the bank robber comes out of the bank "guns blazing" then the police are certainly justified to shoot him as a matter of self-defense.

If, however, the bank robber steps out unarmed and is shot and killed, the family should have the right to bring a wrongful death suit (or something, IANAL) against the police officers in question.

It doesn't matter how many times it mentions the fourth and fifth amendments if these powers of the executive branch are checked only by the executive branch.

There's nothing actually stopping them from overriding the fourth or fifth amendment unless there is public or judicial oversight. And if you give someone power, they will eventually use it for an unintended purpose.

Yet somehow America managed to survive two centuries without the desperate need to assassinate its own people being enshrined into law.

Terrorism is not some new tactic that calls for a radical change in legal powers. These laws are nothing but an extreme power grab.

> Sometimes you have to kill people.

This is not true.

> > Sometimes you have to kill people.

> This is not true.

The position that one must never kill someone else is certainly a defensible position, defended over the centuries by many honorable people. I respect that position. But, even though I have largely pacifist ancestors, I think as a father of a daughter that if the Taliban tried to set up their women-oppressing rule anywhere my daughter might have occasion to live or work, I would oppose them by all means necessary, up to and including lethal force. That's not because forcing women to be covered from head to toe when they go out of their homes is itself a capital crime, but because some Taliban fellow-travelers also commit capital crimes like murdering women who try to teach mothers how to vaccinate their children to keep the children from dying from infectious diseases. I would not be ashamed to kill a baby-killer or woman-murderer.

AFTER EDIT: I will now take time to give a careful lawyer's read to the document (white paper) linked to from the blog post submitted here.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_W...

> I would not be ashamed to kill a baby-killer or woman-murderer.

So your ends justify their means.

This is what the George W. Bush Administration believed and the masses of the majority of the Internet were in an uproar over it. Why has it changed now?

We got used to it.

Give it a few more generations and we will completely forgot what it was like pre-9/11. In 7 year more years ask any 18 year old what their world view is and I imagine it would be completely detached from the reality we grew up with. So it is.

Obama owes Bush Admin a great debt for the expanded executive powers over the years. A lot of Obama supporters back in 2008 had an erroneous belief that once in office Obama would return the balance of power, instead he opted to protect it as well as not pursue prosecution of acts of torture from the previous administration. Maybe that's just the kind of big boy pants decisions that need to be made for the sake "national security" or maybe it's just the leeway required to operate in a post-9/11 world.

Who knows, I'm just a computer nerd, not a poliwonk.

And if we're going to be fantasy quarterbacking maybe at the end of 2016 Obama will leave the office emancipating every inch that were taken in the past two decades, decriminalize, and fully end the global war on terror. That's some Abraham Lincoln level stuff right there.

How do you believe the police should have handled the Sandy Hook gunman?

Imminent violent threat != association with a group "'recently' involved in 'activities' posing a threat of violence."