Interview with President Obama: How does he justify his kill list?

For once a US journalist, Jay Tapper, takes on the White House over Obama's unaccountability, even when he orders the killing of American citizens.

Killing people with drones is Barack Obama's idea of a joke.

A local TV reporter in Cincinnati, Ben Swann, interviewed President Obama and -- unlike virtually all national reporters -- decided to challenge him on how it is that he believes he has the right to order even American citizens assassinated without due process, and specifically asked him about the killing of the American teeanger Abdulrahman Awlaki in Yemen.

Obama's response, needless to say, was to refuse to answer on the ground that it is all a big secret, but the imperiousness of this refusal can only be appreciated by watching the video.

Last year, ABC News' Jake Tapper relentlessly asked White House press secretary Jay Carney similar questions, and if you haven't seen that video, it's really worth doing so to see how odious it is for the President to claim this most extremist power -- to order people assassinated in secret -- and then have to account to nobody for it.

Recall that "three dozen" -- that's "three dozen" -- current and former Obama aides ran to the New York Times in May to heap praise on Obama's supposedly judicious though resolute use of drones to vanquish America's enemies. Recall, too, that he feels free openly to tell jokes about his use of drones to kill people.

But the minute he is confronted with real questions, he retreats -- just like he does when his conduct is challenged in court -- to claiming that it is all just too secret to permit any discussion of it whatsoever.

In other words, The Most Transparent Administration Ever argues that which citizens the President chooses to kill and why is too secret to permit you to know anything about it (unless having you know about it can benefit him politically, in which case dozens of his aides will leak it).