Letter to the editor: Obama’s secret ‘kill list’ makes him unfit for office

When President George W. Bush began amassing unprecedented power to the executive branch of government, eventual tyranny was inevitable. There is a reason the U.S. Constitution states that the power of the three branches remain “separate but equal.” I did not expect that tyranny would begin to raise its ugly head within 36 months and come at the hand of a mild-mannered professor of constitutional law.

Try as I might, I could find no good reason to vote for Mitt Romney. I had resigned myself to the necessity of simply not voting at all. But President Barack Obama has given me a reason to vote for Romney. Romney does not have a “kill list”… yet.

What do we actually know about the president’s kill list? We know it is secret. We know the people on it will be executed without trial. We know that the targets have most likely never been charged with a crime. We know that they will not be given the opportunity to defend themselves. We know that the names of American citizens are not exempt from the president’s secret kill list. And, if we have learned anything from history, we know that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Republicans expressed outrage when the existence of this list was made known by the New York Times. Oh, not because the president of the United States was murdering people secretly and with impunity, but because they thought the existence of this list was deliberately leaked by the White House in order to get votes! I fervently hope that the low opinion of Americans by the GOP is not justified.

Beverly Zellner

Valley City, N.D.

Tags: opinion, letters, politics