The world has officially gone insane. Last week, the Washington Times reported that Obama’s Director of National Intelligence came out and said that the executive branch has no qualms about assassinating American citizens on its own initiative if it thinks doing so would be a good thing for the fight against terrorism. A number of people are upset about this, including Glenn Greenwald, Conor Fiedersdorf, and one of the NYT’s online commentator’s, but I’m amazed this hasn’t sparked a nationwide outrage yet.

Plenty of people were upset when the Bush administration declared it had the power to arrest people arbitrarily, but now the Obama administration says it can kill people arbitrarily. The idea that the government can’t do that is one of those things that’s supposed to keep America from turning into a Stalin-style police state if the wrong people get elected. It’s nice to see a few semi-prominent people complaining about this, but if general outrage doesn’t develop eventually, I’ll be calling hypocrisy on the liberals who were freaked out by the things Bush did. Remember guys, in three years time it may be President Palin wielding this power. (Though Republicans also deserve our contempt for pushing absurd criticisms of Obama while not pouncing on this).