Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said he found it odd that the United States could capture terrorists, "kill if necessary," but that according to some of the reasoning he had heard, "we can't listen to their phone calls."so much wrong packed into such a small quotation:
(1) no one is saying "we can't listen to their [al qaeda's] phone calls. this entire controversy is not about whether we can listen in on a suspected terrorist's conversation, it's about who is allowed to authorize the listening.
(2) if you want to do the kill analogy properly, then we would have to imagine the president authorizing the execution of an individual in the u.s. without any judicial process and without any explanation to anyone outside the administration what the basis for the killing was. believe it or not, senator cornyn, that is not something the president is allowed to do.
it's rather stunning that this guy managed to become a senator, isn't it?
