WASHINGTON

Over the winter, I heard military commanders and White House officials murmur in hushed tones about how they would have to figure out a legal and moral framework for the flying killer robots executing targets around the globe.

They were starting to realize that, while the American public approves of remotely killing terrorists, it is a drain on the democratic soul to zap people with no due process and little regard for the loss of innocents.

But they never got around to it, leaving Rand Paul to take the moral high ground.

After two bloody, money-sucking, never-ending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the idea of a weapon for war that precluded having anyone actually go to war was too captivating. Our sophisticated, sleek, smart, detached president was ensorcelled by our sophisticated, sleek, smart, detached war machine.

In an interview with Jon Stewart last year, President Obama allowed that he was in the grip of a powerful infatuation. “One of the things that we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place,” he said, “and we need Congressional help to do that to make sure that not only am I reined in, but any president is reined in.”