Yes, and that is why we need to elect Russ Feingold, for his steady leadership, his strength of character, and his political courage not to mention his abiity to string two sentences together and handle Tim Russert.

Or John Edwards, who supports everything Feingold does, and can compete in the South.

from al gore's jan 16, 2006 speech, 'We the People' Must Save Our Constitution':

Vigilant adherence to the rule of law strengthens our democracy and strengthens America. It ensures that those who govern us operate within our constitutional structure, which means that our democratic institutions play their indispensable role in shaping policy and determining the direction of our nation. It means that the people of this nation ultimately determine its course and not executive officials operating in secret without constraint.

The rule of law makes us stronger by ensuring that decisions will be tested, studied, reviewed and examined through the processes of government that are designed to improve policy. And the knowledge that they will be reviewed prevents over-reaching and checks the accretion of power.

A commitment to openness, truthfulness and accountability also helps our country avoid many serious mistakes. Recently, for example, we learned from recently classified declassified documents that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the tragic Vietnam war, was actually based on false information. We now know that the decision by Congress to authorize the Iraq War, 38 years later, was also based on false information. America would have been better off knowing the truth and avoiding both of these colossal mistakes in our history. Following the rule of law makes us safer, not more vulnerable.

I have to disagree that the right is operating out of panic. it's not a lack of faith in bedrock American political traditions, but a lack a basic support--and, in many cases, downright hostility--for them. They are not acting out of panic, but rather they are cold bloodedly fanning the public panic following 9/11 as a tool to achieve antidemocratic ends that they wished to achieve in any case. Or did you think Dick Cheney was an adherent of transparent Jeffersonian democracy on 9/10?

People who don't know history are doomed to repeat it? That's the only explanation I can think of...

One of the saddest aspects of the Bin Laden/Bush-Cheney era is the willingness of Americans to see our rights curtailed in the name of safety. Letters to both the New York Times and the New York Daily News denouced the Times for printing the story about the NSA looking into bank records. There are frequent letters supporting the rights of Americans in the name of fighting terrorism.

Feingold was very impressive on the Meet the Press today but has no chance of becoming president and it has nothing to do with his views. However, the Democratic Party could learn a lesson from him and Murtha. Don't whine just explain, defend and counterattack. This country needs an education and only people with spine can undertake the job.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

"the sheer pointlessness and wastage of time and resources involved."

Exactly - the hallmark of the state is incompetence AND malice.

Anybody who's been in the military OR Federal prison - and I've been in both - can see it in all its pristine immaculateness.

Citizens who haven't had either experience just don't understand the nature of their own government.

Right on.

To believe that these people are just "mistaken" or "panicked" is to ignore their own statements - and more importantly, to ignore their actual actions.

As William Burroughs once wrote, debating whether the DEA or whoever has positive intentions is like debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin: "By their actions ye shall know them. And the results of their actions are deplorable."

The ONLY people who can rationally analyze the situation are those who stand outside the notion that there is any legitimacy in the basic concept of the state itself or the motivations of the people who advocate it.

As Einstein put it, "A problem cannot be solved in terms of itself."

It was Justice Brandeis who wrote:

“Experience should remind us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding…”

Brandeis, of course, is right. I also think that “well-meaning” zealots “without understanding” can become “evil minded rulers”. What allows that to happen is secrecy. Secrecy allows them to begin and perpetuate evil plans. The evil must remain hidden. Not out of shame. Evil knows no shame. But out of fear of the loss of power.

What may have begun as a “well-meaning” attempt, to secure us from further attack, became “evil-minded” when they began to play the PNAC cards, which had been up their sleeves for many years. Plan meet opportunity – aces over eights. And the lying, and the cheating, and evil begins. Hell, you’re in power, you’re a winner, it’s your pot.

But just as you’re ready to rake in all the chips – someone grabs you by the wrist. You’ve gotten away with this cheating for so long you got sloppy. You carried it one hand too far. It always happens that way – just one hand too many. You stepped on a whole mess of toes, and now it’s been noticed. You thought you could get away with this forever. But nothing is forever. Especially when it comes to winning streaks or politics. People are going to want explanations, and so far all you had were excuses, and lies, and the confidence of a winner. But when you start to lose lots of things change, and none of them for the better. The press, the Congress, the people, all start to look at you a little differently. First the blind loyalty goes, then the benefit of the doubt, then even the base gets wobbly, now people start to avoid you, they talk behind your back. It’s accountability time!

Accountability demands transparency. This leads to debates about ways to accomplish the needed ends without the loss of rights, or having to use evil methods. And people begin to question why you had to use evil to accomplish what could have been done without it. And once that happens the “evil-minded” not only lose power, but the protection of supporters, and respect, and face the possibility of the loss of their freedom through prosecution. That’s when you begin to wish you had played it straight and honest, and took your losses as they came. And changed your strategy, and your methods, to make up for those losses along the way. That’s when you wish you had played honest with a pair of nines, instead of the full-house up your sleeve. You thought the run would never end, but it always does, and it always will. When you’ve never been held accountable for anything before, it’s hard to believe it can happen to you. But whether you’ve been able to cheat your way through life, or cheat at cards, eventually the odds turn against you. The house never loses in the end!

Matthew,

This is the core of the core of the problem. The Right in this country just doesn't believe in the institutions and principles that have directed this country for over 200 years. They believe that the destruction of a building in New York is cause for dismantling the most basic things about America: the balance of powers, people's right to privacy, the constitution.

They just don't believe that those fundamental institutions are worthy of our faith. This is the most important difference between them and us.

If there was only a way to let redstate America understand this difference.

Thanks for your article.

The distrust of people to make up their own minds is a characteristic of all ideologies. Just look at the reaction to the DaVinci Code. Is seeing a fictional movie going to so shake the faith of Christians that they will leave their congregations? How about the Danish cartoons (I know some claim blasphemy, but this just the same thing under a different name).

This is the same impulse that causes people to ban books. Those with the weakest basis for their ideologies resort to suppression of information and intimidation since they know that a vigorous debate would reveal their underlying falsities.

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

We should all be deathly afraid of the Miami ghetto terrorists.  Once they can raise enough money, standing on ghetto street corners with a cup, to buy tee shirts with their logo on them, to buy matching trousers, to buy matching Nikes, well, they just might then decide to buy matching BB guns.  Danger personified!

Of course it appears that their main focus was on their religion, but that's true of the Islamic terrorists too.  And, we all know that freedom of religion isn't part of our Constitution. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

"The right" is not a homogeneous block of voters.  (Nor is the left.)  The right is a very small group of very wealthy people who lust after much more wealth, and controlling the government is an obvious path to that wealth.  By themselves, they are a splinter, fringe group of nuts.  But, they latched on a brilliant strategy - demonize groups of people that are largely hated by the majority, give lip service, and sometimes more, to the religious extremists, wink and pander to the race hatreds that still exist here, use wars and threats of wars to terrorize the voters, and, by far the most important, use the promise of limitless tax cuts to draw in the economically and politically ignorant.  The small group of the very wealthy who run the government now, have no convictions beyond making more money, no interest in what is best for the country, and no scruples at all that might limit what they will do to remain in power.   There is the real problem we face.

Hoppy in Sacramento

How soon we forget this quote from recent history (referring to Osama Bin Laden, al Qaeda and terrorists around the globe):

"Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." [emphasis added]

Said by none other than our dear leader George W. Bush, September 20, 2001, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html

And for the next 4+ years his administration, the Republicans in congress, conservative pundits, et al has been in a competition with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to see who hates our freedom more by trashing whatever feeble attempts the MSM has taken to expose the administration's illegal actions, attacking Democrats who don't fall in lock step behind whatever Bush/Cheyney want, by unconstitutional attempts through signing statements to thwart the will of Congress, our democratically elected government, in general to act to undermine everything that Bin Laden supposedly hates. Who is the traitor, those who speak against the administration, or an administration and its supporters that continue to undermine those freedoms we should hold sacred - because after all we are at "war." Everything changed after 9/11 after all (oops, Bush said this to applause in Congress at what I believe was his first big public statement after 9/11).

I humbly think it's about time the President's words were thrown right back at him and his ilk. Or was this another Bush lie?

(PS, It took a few functioning brain cells and a search on "george bush osama bin laden hates our freedom" to turn this up as top hit in Google. Maybe I was the only one who remembers this speech...)

Napablogger

I dunno, as an apostate Republican over the issues you all are talking about here, the secrets, the NSA wiretapping, the torture, etc, I don't think Matthew or any of the rest of you understand where at least rank and file Republicans like myself are at on these things. You are too paranoid in my view.

They see it as being strong, as winning the war. They see it as not cutting and running like say Clinton did in Somalia that Osama famously used as a way to say we were weak and paper tigers. In short, its a macho thing. They see the Democrats as weaklings, too compromising, and if the other guy cuts your balls off then you cut his and his kids balls off too.

Myself I am falling out over this with many Republicans, because I think no war justifies giving up civil liberties. I think Bush has gone too far, and the seperation of powers is a source of strength, not weakness.

Jonah Goldberg quoted “his friend,” Michael Ledeen, as pronouncing a sort of neocon philosophy: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." –from Arthur Silber