> Is it ok for the president to murder someone but not for a distraught spouse?
It's not OK for the President to murder someone, but it may be OK to kill someone if it's within President's powers as chief executive and commander in chief. These powers are vast, that's the reason people carefully examine candidate's abilities, experience, moral standing, ability to take right decisions, etc. and do not base their choice on catchy bumper stickers and amount of money the candidate promises to extract from other people and give to them. Or at least they should be doing this if they don't want surprises later...
We need to increase the number of checks and balances in our government. They've been eroding steadily over the last century, resulting in the overly powerful executive branch we have today. For example, there was a time when the president did not have the ability to wage war without legislative approval.
The progressives (circa 1900) were not the first group that wished to diminish checks and balances, but they were the most consistent opponents of that system. And because they had a complete, systematic ideology, they succeeded in their goals, even though they were incorrect. See the following paragraph from Woodrow Wilson's book, "The New Freedom: A Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People":
"The trouble with the theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life. No living thing can have its organs offset against each other, as checks, and live. On the contrary, its life is dependent upon their quick co-operation, their ready response to the commands of instinct or intelligence, their amicable community of purpose. Government is not a body of blind forces; it is a body of men, with highly differentiated functions, no doubt, in our modern day, of specialization, with a common task and purpose. Their co-operation is indispensable, their warfare fatal. There can be no successful government without the intimate, instinctive co-ordination of the organs of life and action. This is not theory, but fact, and displays its force as fact, whatever theories may be thrown across its track. Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop."
It's not OK for the President to murder someone, but it may be OK to kill someone if it's within President's powers as chief executive and commander in chief. These powers are vast, that's the reason people carefully examine candidate's abilities, experience, moral standing, ability to take right decisions, etc. and do not base their choice on catchy bumper stickers and amount of money the candidate promises to extract from other people and give to them. Or at least they should be doing this if they don't want surprises later...