For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:
A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.
On a day that found The Garlic into Day Three of a major allergy siege, nothing was more refreshing than, yet another, shining Special Comment by
Tonight’s spot-on delivery by Olbermann was 'Beginning of the end of
“With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?”
Wise words.
And ironic ones, Mr. Bush.
Your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act.
You spoke so much more than you know, Sir.
Sadly—of course—the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously was you.
Olbermann, for the past week, or so, has done what our elected Congress has not done ... What our elected Senate has not done and what most of the free press here in
That is, to point how, in getting his torture-authorizing, Geneva Convention-ignoring Detainee Bill passed, and the President’s boastful signing of it yesterday (in which, he continued to paint his lies, a subject of earlier Olbermann Special Comments - links below), how it not only denies rights to terrorists or “enemy combatants” but puts every single American in jeopardy as well.
As Olbermann bellowed a number of times, Congress, as well as a complacent media and population, has given the President a “blank check”
We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has said it is unacceptable to compare anything this country has ever done to anything the terrorists have ever done.We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has insisted again that “the
We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens “unlawful enemy combatants” and ship them somewhere—anywhere -- but may now, if he so decides, declare you an “unlawful enemy combatant” and ship you somewhere - anywhere.
And if you think this hyperbole or hysteria, ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was president or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was president or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was president.
And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant”—exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?
This President now has his blank check.
He lied to get it.
He lied as he received it.
Is there any reason to even hope he has not lied about how he intends to use it nor who he intends to use it against?
Links To More
Crooks and Liars has the video - Countdown Special Comment: Death of Habeas Corpus: “Your words are lies, Sir.”
Read or watch the video - The death of habeas corpus - Olbermann: ‘The president has now succeeded where no one has before’
The Garlic’s Top Ten Cloves: In Words, What America Means Now To The International Community
Other Minced Garlic’s -
