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? (For a concurring opinion, see The New York Times editorial of September 28, 2006).
So it comes to this: those of us who openly oppose the policies of the Bush administration, are free today at the whim of the Bush administration -- simply because the Busheviks choose not to seize all our assets (cf. Executive Order, July 17, 2007) or to round us up and "preventively detain" us.
To be sure, Bush's newly-acquired dictatorial powers are not total. He dare not "disappear" Congressional dissenters such as Russ Feingold or Dennis Kucinich, or media critics such as Keith Olbermann. Not yet. Such overt acts could, at last, mobilize Congressional and media opposition sufficiently to put an end to the this incipient dictatorship. But these are practical limitations. As the Padilla case has vividly demonstrated, legal constraints have been effectively abolished.
If such "practical limitations" are all that we have left, then let us use them to fullest advantage. Bush/Cheney, Inc., might be able to silence and incarcerate dozens of insignificant wretches such as Padilla, Lindh, Yee, etc. Perhaps even hundreds or thousands. But not yet members of Congress or media critics, or prominent dissenters such as Al Gore and ex-Presidents Carter and Clinton. Least of all the organized and massed protests of millions of ordinary citizens.
While the door to a restoration of our liberties still remains unlocked, we must push it open and rush through it. Waiting for others to effect our rescue and hoping for the best, will only permit the oppressors to lock that door.
Pastor Martin Niemoller's warning is as valid today as ever:
In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.
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