On Monday, President Obama said the culprits in the Boston Marathon bombings will "feel the full weight of justice."
At Tuesday's press conference, Obama said, "We will find whoever harmed our citizens and we will bring them to justice."
But what does he mean by "justice"?
Obama has a bad habit of using the word "justice" when his Administration rubs someone out, whether it's in Pakistan or Yemen with a drone strike or the Navy Seals taking down bin Laden.
In this regard, he is like George W. Bush, who liked to say that he had brought many Al Qaeda operatives "to justice."
Both Bush and Obama have used "justice" to mean "frontier justice" or "rough justice" or an "eye for an eye."
It's not our vaunted system of justice, enshrined in our Constitution and in our jurisprudence: a system that upholds due process and habeas corpus and assumes the innocence of the accused and allows for trial by jury and for an appellate process.
This is not mere semantics. After all, President Obama has asserted his authority to assassinate anyone anywhere in the world, whether a U.S. citizen or not, if he considers that person a terrorist threat.
Is Obama going to send in the drones against the Boston Marathon suspects?
Or is he going to actually let justice be done the way it is supposed to be done in this country, and under international law?
That would mean something quaint, like an arrest and a trial, for a change.
If you liked this story by Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive magazine, check out his story "Obama's Huge Betrayal."
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