Are scarier than Sarah's fever dream:
American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials. There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate. The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant preacher with alleged al Qaeda connections, to the target list.
Ackerman is appalled that Marty Lederman, a strong critic of Bush's expansion of executive power, apparently co-authored a legal memo justifying the execution of al-Awlaki:
I seriously question how this memo reflects anything but the ratification of a forgone conclusion. Its arguments, as reported [NYT] by Charlie (the best reporter working on national security law), are flimsy, even to my non-lawyer mind. I suspected such a forgone conclusion when it came to the torture memos penned by Yoo, Bybee, Addington, Gonzales, Haynes, etc. I would be guilty of hypocrisy and cowardice if I did not extend those suspicions to someone I actually like as a human being, and whose politics are far similar to my own.
My views on this remain the same. I do believe, however, that the executive branch should provide much more transparency here. If a US citizen is to be targeted in rare instances when they cannot be captured, then the reasons for doing so need to be explained, not assumed.
The Dish 