And the Alice in Wonderland style perversion and dismantling of our most fundamental legal principles continues apace:

Its been exactly one year since then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey proposed in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute that Congress pass legislation declaring a new, expanded war with al-Qaeda and the Taliban thereby granting the president the authority to detain indefinitely members of those groups anywhere in the world where theyre found.

That proposal from a lame-duck Attorney General never got very far with the Democratic-controlled Congress. But a year later, the country is still debating that exact same detention authority. And news reports suggest that President Obama may seek precisely the same sort of authority that Mukasey was talking about.

Although the Detainee Policy Task Force yesterday announced it was taking a six-month extension on its deadline to formulate the policy, reports from National Public Radio, The Washington Post and Politico have all quoted anonymous Obama administration officials saying the president intends to create or continue some sort of indefinite detention system for suspected terrorists associated with al-Qaeda or the Taliban, whether through new legislation or mere consultation with Congress.

Note: "suspected."

The Bush administration introduced the pernicious notion that persons captured far from any battlefield, even US citizens taken on US soil, could be detained in perpetuity simply on the executive's say-so. I asked Bush supporters at the time if they were comfortable with future presidents of other parties having that power. Well now that appears to be coming to fruition, as President Obama seeks to put the stamp of bipartisanship on this assertion of despotic power.

Happy now?

Our system of checks and balances is broken. Congress has refused to make a robust assertion of its prerogatives for the last nine years at least. The courts have offered some small push-back, but will generally defer to the political branches when they appear to be united. So the executive continues to amass power and set itself ever further above the law. And the press/media, having been full co-opted by its addiction to the drug of "access" has by and large failed to fulfill its role of aggressively questioning the actions of government.


I take no pleasure in saying I told you so.

but i think war has its own rules even,apparently, domestic ones

if congress refuses to act to prevent these things....then what next?

the founders wanted "limited government....the liberals disagreed all along....


i hate to say i told you so...