Jon Meacham pointed out that the American Revolution took place in part to repudiate the idea that a single person could decide who lives or dies, as President Obama does with a drone strike program that countenances killing American citizens.
“The rule of law could not simply be in the hands of a king and could not be arbitrarily applied, and that’s precisely what this is, is [the rule of law] in the hands of an American king,” Meacham, who recently wrote a biography of Thomas Jefferson, said on Morning Joe.
Joe Scarborough added that “the next step is the killings take place on American soil, and we’re not far from that.”
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said he didn’t know of any constitutional principle that would prevent Obama from killing American citizens in the United States, if Obama thinks they are a terrorist threat, but said they don’t have to kill them because of the “feasibility of capture.”
The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that “no person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
