This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, March 8, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has laid out the circumstances under which the US can execute American citizens

abroad without trial. Unfortunately, Holder's defense of these assassinations

depends on an entirely new definition of due process. Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, comments.

Even before the government killed Radical Cleric Anwar al-Alaki,

it was an open secret that this administration was asserting the right

and the authority to order the killing, the targeted killing of Americans overseas that

it believed were allied to Al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups.

And earlier this week, Attorney General Eric Holder did us the favor of laying out, least in part the conditions under which the government

believes it is entitled to kill Americans abroad.

I say in part because conspicuously Holder sad that the government could target the assassination of Americans at least under the following conditions.

He insisted of course that these weren't really assassinations

because even though they look in every other way exactly like assassinations,

assassinations are unlawful killings that we don't engage in and so by definition because these are lawful they must not be

assassinations but at least under conditions that have been for sometime

public because they were reported in New York Times.

The president may order the targeted killing or assassination if you prefer of Americans

abroad.

And it sounds on face, not totally unreasonable.

It says, a senior operational leader of Al-Qaeda

or associated forces, whether a force is associated,

...