Richard Cohen suddenly worried about scope of presidential anti-terror powers

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:41:00 +0000

Richard Cohen, the universe's worst opinion columnist, has rather belatedly and unexpectedly grown alarmed at the size and scope of the expensive, unaccountable death machine that is our counter-terror state. Don't get alarmed -- he's still no bleeding-heart anti-American hippie crying about the "rights" of terrorists who hate us and want to destroy us for our freedom -- but the idea that an American citizen's death warrant can be secretly signed by a couple of Justice Department lawyers seems to have shaken Cohen out of his 40-year fog of elite Beltway complacency. Sort of.

This is a big leap for Richard Cohen, a writer who hates democracy and defended Dick Cheney's torture regime as recently as 2009. (2009!)

So he begins by pointing out that he cheered the death of Anwar al-Awlaki:

Salon.com > Richard Cohen

Richard Cohen suddenly worried about scope of presidential anti-terror powers