From Reason
by Matt Welch

The first 61 words of this chilling and banal
New York Times
article are a perfect distillation of how grotesque power
appears in the eye of Americans who wield it:

Facing the possibility that President Obama might not win a
second term, his administration accelerated work in the weeks
before the election to develop explicit rules for the targeted
killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new
president would inherit clear standards and procedures, according
to two administration officials.

The matter may have lost some urgency after Nov. 6.

A reminder to most Democrats who spent 2002-08 telling us that
abuse of executive
power was at or near the top of the nation’s most urgent moral
concerns: You just didn’t mean it.

Continued