TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

The government is arguing in court that only the executive branch is capable of deciding whether American citizens pose enough of a threat that they should be assassinated:

Mr. Hauck acknowledged that Americans targeted overseas do have rights, but he said they could not be enforced in court either before or after the Americans were killed. Judges, he suggested, have neither the expertise nor the tools necessary to assess the danger posed by terrorists, the feasibility of capturing them or when and how they should be killed.

“Courts don’t have the apparatus to analyze” such issues, so they must be left to the executive branch, with oversight by Congress, Mr. Hauck said. But he argued, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has in the past, that there are multiple “checks” inside the executive branch to make sure such killings are legally justified.

Just to make what the government claims a little more clear: the government is arguing that the executive branch should have the legal power to decide wholly on its own which American citizens need killed.

What rights do we have when they “[cannot] be enforced in court either before or after” the president kills one of us, and if the president has the power to decide who should be killed?