President Barack Obama has personally ordered the assassination of a U.S. citizen. Yep! The C.I.A. is authorized to kill cleric Anwar al-Awlaki wherever and whenever they find him. At home, on vacation, maybe right behind you. Crypto-fascists are thrilled!

It just seems like a really, really bad precedent, to decide that the president can do this. In fact, I am pretty sure the president can't do this. Obviously, presidents and the CIA have gone around assassinating people willy-nilly for decades, but the point is that they shouldn't be doing that.

But here's the good news, President Obama: you have finally done something crazy enough to win the support of former assistant US Attorney, police state enthusiast, and "Obama is just like Ahmadinejad" theorist Andy McCarthy!

McCarthy thinks he has caught "the Left" in a brilliant double-standard. They like Obama, and they like reading terrorists their rights, and they like holding "trials" for people "accused" of "crimes," and they presumably like this Assassination Program thing because their boyfriend Barack Obama is doing it. How illogical!

Because he is a moron, Andy McCarthy does not understand that "the Left" will not like this at all. Old fashioned, TNR-publishing hawk Democrats will be fine with it, because they are the people who were also totally into that Iraq thing. But that is not "the Left." "The Democrats" do not equal "the Left." That is an incredibly, embarrassingly obvious statement, and one that literally any follower of politics would not need to have explained to him or her at any point in the last 100 years besides the immediate, crazy present, when supposed informed pundits like Andy McCarthy are seriously convinced that "The Left" will cheerlead an insane policy devised by Bush's hack lawyers. Oh, look, The Nation and The Daily Worker just published a joint editorial announcing their enthusiastic support for "the presidential assassination program," because words don't mean anything anymore and everyone is a fucking moron.

Argh.

(Some other guy at The Corner is uneasy about this new policy of the President decided he can kill any American citizen he wants any time he wants. God, why does this other guy at The Corner want Americans to die from terror? When did K-Lo start letting hippies in the clubhouse?)

Once again, for all the FDR-worship talk from the White House, it really looks like they're modeling their first term on LBJ. Sorry, historic domestic achievements, but we have endless illegal warfare to take care of!