The lawyers who denounced Bush's claim of presidential war power were "uneasy" when it was their task to define Obama's war power.

Back in 2008, David Barron and Martin Lederman had published — in the Harvard Law Review — a "definitive denunciation" of President Bush's approach to war powers. Now, they were writing a secret memo in support of Obama's power:

It preliminarily concluded, based on the evidence available at the time, that [Anwar al-]Awlaki was a lawful target because he was participating in the war with Al Qaeda and also because he was a specific threat to the country....

But as months passed, Mr. Barron and Mr. Lederman grew uneasy. They told colleagues there were issues they had not adequately addressed, particularly after reading a legal blog that focused on a statute that bars Americans from killing other Americans overseas....

Their labors played out against the backdrop of how some of their predecessors under President George W. Bush had become defined by their once-secret memos....

Nearly three years later, a version of the legal analysis portions would become public in the “white paper”... Divorced from its original context... the free-floating reasoning would lead to widespread confusion....

Karma's a bitch!