Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder said:

The American people can be — and deserve to be — assured that actions taken in their defense are consistent with their values and their laws.

I agree, Mr. Holder, but if you really cared about informing the American public more than silencing critics of the administration's Executive power grab, you would release the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memos "legalizing" assassinating American citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki without a shred of due process and engaging in secret drone warfare in the airspace of sovereign nations. Even the conservative Washington Post editorial board (whose opinion on drone strikes differs from mine) agrees on release of the memos:

If the administration is intent on reassuring the American public, it should release the Justice Department memorandum that lays out the domestic and international strictures which, it says, undergird its drone policy.

The offensiveness of the Justice Department's hypocritical secrecy is trumped only by Holder's Constitution-shredding rationalizations.  

The factual scenarios Holder says would be enough to assassinate Americans amount to punishing individuals for thoughts. First Amendment need not apply.

[Holder] said the president is not required by the Constitution to delay action until some “theoretical end stage of planning — when the precise time, place and manner of an attack become clear.”

Author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People and whistleblower Peter Van Buren discussed the State Department's retaliatory actions on NPR Sunday. From the NPR story:

The halls of the State Department are haunted, not by actual ghosts, but by people who might as well be ghosts. They're called hallwalkers, people who blew the whistle, people who angered someone powerful, people who for one reason or another can't be fired.

But they can be stripped of their security clearances, their desks and their duties and left to walk aimlessly up and down the halls of that massive building. Sometimes they're required to show up at the building to get paid. Sometimes they're allowed to telecommute from home.

The State Department's anti-free speech retaliation included stripping Van Buren of his security clearance, a forced transfer to a telework position after weeks of paid administrative leave, and banning him from entering State Department facilities. Van Buren explained:

There are procedures in the State Department to fire someone or to discipline someone. There are rules that the State Department claims are broken. But rather than pursue those avenues, which would have allowed me to defend myself, the State Department instead followed a different path where they used bureaucratic tools, unofficial ways of doing business that pushed me out of the village, sent me into the wilderness.