EASY LISTENING DEP’T.: On the website, the Times this morning published a piece that really digs into and emphasizes the point that its reporters keep making, down inside the incremental coverage of Donald Trump's ongoing campaign of slaughter at sea. It's a NEWS ANALYSIS piece by Charlie Savage, “The peril of a White House that flaunts its indifference to the law. The White House has made no legal argument explaining its bald claim that the president has wartime power to summarily kill people suspected of smuggling drugs.” It's gonna take some restraint for me not to just read the whole story into the microphone. “Since he returned to office nine months ago,” Savage writes, “President Trump has sought to expand executive power across numerous fronts, but his claim that he can lawfully order the military to summarily kill people accused of smuggling drugs on boats off the coast of South America stands apart.” That's really well-tuned. It avoids even the slight misstep of the subheadline by describing the targets of the president's attacks as people “accused” of smuggling drugs, not people “suspected,” since “suspected” is an internal state with a degree of imputed sincerity behind it that Donald Trump has absolutely not earned.

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