Reply #7: There is a basic principle at stake here.

[Vattel]

If a US citizen poses an imminent threat (e.g., the citizen is a bank robber who has a gun to the head of a hostage, or the citizen is an enemy combatant firing at US Marines), the individual who poses the threat may be killed without any judicial oversight. But it is a bsic principle of due process that where time permits (as it did in Al-Awlaki's case), there should be judicial process before a citizen is deprived of his or her life. To flout that principle is to make a mockery of the due process clauses of the fifth and fourteenth amendments. It is a principle that stands between us and an executive who can arbitrarily dispose of our lives. Sadly, Obama is playing a role in destroying that principle.