Much Hubbabaloo about nothing, obscuring the real issue.

Noted conspiracy theorist and U.S. Senator Rand Paul posted a letter from Attorney General Holder responding to his request about if the President could order drone strikes in the U.S. against U.S. citizens.  Holder responded that it was conceivable that under "extraordinary" circumstances it would be permissible, listing Pearl Harbor and 9/11 as examples. Paul, I'm sure giddy from this admission, proclaimed "refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening. It is an affront to the constitutional due process rights of all Americans," in an attempt to highlight the Tea Party talking point that Obama is systematically consolidating power.  However, Holder's response does not change anything; drones are military weapons, and can be used in a similar way to a sniper when there is sufficient threat of military threat.  The situations Holder described in his letter can be considered military attacks on the United States, and I would assume that a President would have some authority over military responses to these attacks.  It would be wise to determine the scope of "extraordinary" but to think that you could unequivocally rule out the use of military force inside the country would be impossible in a world in which the possibility of attack still exists.  However to appease the posturing of Ryan by saying the President in no hypothetical circumstance would have this power is unreasonable, and probably a violation of the constitution which grants powers to the President as Commander in Chief of the military.  While congress has meekly sat on its hands instead of trying to define when the president can use military force throughout the last 60 years, I guess it is refreshing that he Holder did not lie about the scope of the power granted to the president to hopefully provide impetus to congress to finally act.

Pretending that this isn't just a crass attack on the President for political brownie points, it does raise some important questions.  Why do we allow the president to broadly define the scope of when his own military powers are valid?  We can start with the Patriot Act which gives broad discretion for the President to play judge, jury and executioner. If the President determines, in his own judgement, that the suspect is an imminent threat to U.S. security, that is sufficient to order a drone strike.  The Act as applied is used to preemptively incapacitate people deemed to be terrorists.  In a war zone, killing a U.S. citizen behind enemy lines can probably serve as due process because you have notice that people near enemy combatants have the potential to be killed as an unfortunate consequence of war.  The problem is that here, the geographic war zone is indeterminate and thus the limitation granted by the requirement of "being an imminent threat," hardly can constitute due process.  Nonetheless, congress has said these are authorized military strikes and the courts appear to be in no mood to answer the hard questions. We see actions of the President implementing the act according to its provision.

Ryan can scold the president for saying things we already know have been delegated to the president, or he can do his job, and convince congress to delineate the extent of where wars and military action occur more clearly to reign in the president.