Interesting bit of political wonkery ahead. There's a way to get rid of a president. It's called impeachment. Impeachment is a political trial for political cr

Interesting bit of political wonkery ahead. There's a way to get rid of a president. It's called impeachment. Impeachment is a political trial for political crimes. Basically looking like an idiot. It's not a criminal trial. Why is that important? Because we don't criminalize politicians doing their job. It's expected that the president do things which would never be acceptable if an average citizen does them: kidnapping spies, blowing up things here or there, sending warships in harm's way, and whatnot. We don't call these crimes because in point of fact somebody has to make decisions like this. It's part of the job. (I'm not approving of any of this, simply trying to explain how the system works.) So I agree with Mr. Paul's first sentence, with one change: "I BELIEVE that the systemic killing of American citizens without a trial is an extraordinary concept and deserves serious debate." Or, in other words, killing any American overseas without a trial is wrong all the time, but I understand presidents do things that are extraordinary. One of the jobs of Congress is to provide a check on his power. (Congress has made a terrible mess of this oversight responsibility. Congress is ultimately at blame in all of this for giving a wink and nob when it was started.) What's, for lack of a better term, evil, is the creation of a system to automatically do things that bend the rules to this degree without the president having any skin in the game at all. He gets this crazy-broad power, and he's not risking his office when the decision is made to use it. That is insane. And I do not believe a debate has anything at all to do with it. It's wrong. It should stop. There's nothing more to be said. If the president wants to go off on some bone-headed assassination adventure, he won't be the first one, Congress should debate and take action depending on the specifics. But if he wants to create a system whereby robots are used to assassinate citizens abroad on a regular basis without trial? There's no amount of debate in the world that's going to make that work.