screen = windshield

The ACLU is asking about is the process by which the US government decides that someone is a valid target. I think that pretty much everyone agrees that if someone is an enemy combatant (i.e. carrying weapons or attacking friendly forces) they are fair game. The question becomes what happens when the target is a) not in an area of active operations b)not engaged in armed conflict and c)a US citizen.

Lets take a hypothetical case of a US citizen operating in Yemen who the US government believes to be funding AQ. Is it legal for the president to order the US military to kill this person? It would pretty clearly be illegal to summarily execute them if they were operating out of New Jersey, but frankly is Yemen any different?

People look down on the south because it was their own damn fault. The big difference between the revolutionary war and the civil war was the fact the could vote. In the revolutionary war the colonies(USA) had absolutely zero representation in parliament. At the start of the civil war the south had 66 representatives in congress (~28%) and 22 out the 66 senators.

Also, be aware that the reasons for succession outlined by South Carolina had nothing to do with tariffs or taxes. The stated reasons were:

a) some northern states were refusing to follow the fugitive slave act.

b) the federal government was poking it's nose into the slavery question, and the south didn't think it belonged there.

c) The president elect was anti-slavery.

In short, the south backed an economic strategy which limited it's political clout and when whining about it stopped working they started a war.

Hey, don't be so pessimistic. According to the bureau of Labor statistics there were 759,200 lawyers practicing in the US in 2008. Let's call it 800,000 for nice number. Then lets assume it takes 100 ft of chain per lawyer. Chain costs about $5.87 per foot from mcmaster carr, but lets call it $6.00 per foot including hardware. So $600 per lawyer gives us $480,000,000 in costs, assuming volunteer labor. The US is currently spending about 65 billion per year on the war in Afganistan, or about 170 million per day. So if the US moves the pull out date up by 3 days we save enough money to chain all of the lawyers to the bottom of the sea floor. NB: I may be significantly underestimating the costs, but even if I'm of by an order of magnitude, that's still less than a month of war-fighting.