The GOP’s Crazy Uncle has gone off his meds. Again. He’s now saying that it’s only a matter of time before the country starts assassinating journalists:

Everyone’s favorite Kantian epistemologist Ron Paul is still unnerved by what he calls the American “assassination” of the U.S.-born al Qaeda leader and terrorist recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki last week. Yesterday, Paul told an audience at the National Press Club that citizens needed to protest the killing, or else the government may start eyeing new targets for assassination soon: “Can you imagine being put on a list because you’re a threat? What’s going to happen when they come to the media? What if the media becomes a threat? Or a professor becomes a threat?…This is the way this works. It’s incrementalism,” he said.

“It’s slipping and sliding, let me tell you,” he said. Al-Awlaki was killed in Yemen by a missile fired from an American drone aircraft; it was the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks that an American citizen had been deliberately targeted and killed by American forces. Also during his speech, Paul compared al-Awlaki, and Samir Kahn, another American-turned-al Qaeda operative killed in the attack, to Nazi war criminals. “All the Nazi criminals were tried. They were taken to court and then executed. The reason we do this is because we want to protect the rule of law,” said Paul.

Paul, who also announced that he had raised $8 million from supporters, said that Obama was to blame for the erosion of civil liberties, and called the “assassination” an impeachable offense: “We have crossed that barrier from republic to dictatorship, to tyranny to empire.”

Where to begin with this - how about the comparison with Nazi war criminals.

We tried Nazi war criminals after the war ended. Before it ended? We pursued ‘em and either killed or captured Nazis. The war al Qaeda launched against the US hasn’t ended, and people like Awlaki who have essentially renounced their US citizenship by consorting with AQ are still valid targets.

Yet, there is some kernel of validity to the concern of a slippery slope - where does the justification for assassinating enemies of the US end - at US borders? Who are valid targets? Paul just isn’t the one who can be taken seriously on this.