noteworthy wrote:
But as her comment continues to reverberate, her intention becomes increasingly clear: this was not just an offhand or ignorant remark, but rather a big Fuck You to the Supreme Court and its decisions over the last four years. And in this she stands in league with McCain [and Yoo and Addington et al], echoing his disdain for the foundation of democracy.

You get the impression that this disdain is politically necessary. This does relate to my comment about the candidates becoming both less honest and more authoritarian as the election approaches. Lord only knows what Palin actually thinks about such matters, if she thinks of them at all. Its clear that McCain thinks that the Bush administration has gone too far, but its not clear how far McCain would go. The Republican base, however, loves this sort of talk. The Republican party is opposed to legal due process, perhaps in general. Like McCain, its hard to know where they would draw a line.

Thanks for these links. On some level the Bush administration has done us a service, in demonstrating just how weak our civil liberties are. I continue to view Padilla as the most important case. An American citizen seized on US soil was detained without a specific criminal accusation for several years while the court system fiddled about technicalities and ultimately failed to resolve the question of his detention. By the time they hauled him into a criminal court his mind had been destroyed. If they can do it to him, they can do it to anyone, presuming the court system and the Congress are as deferential as they were in this case. What this really means is that the system of checks and balances doesn't work particularly well under pressure, and they probably need to be amended. Now that these men are soon out of the Whitehouse the question should turn to how to change the system to prevent this from happening again.

RE: Official American Sadism