Joe Klein once agains brags about his Civil Liberties Cluelessness

I don't have much patience for legal niceties when thousands of innocents are being targeted and killed.

Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/11/18/the-al-qaeda-trial/

I responded with a hypotheitical:


We've always loved that about you Joe. Unfortunately legal niceties are the only thing that stands between civilization and chaos. Lets pretend for arguments sake that a rogue group of true believing neocons, started engaging in terrorist-like activities like perhaps sending Anthrax spores to people in the mail. Let's further assume that a prominent lobbying group with foreign connections was found to be involved.

Certainly the nature of the threat would dictate that waterboarding would be an appropriate tool for investigation and that failing that, preemptively arresting and permanently detaining the members of that lobbying organization would be AOK. And of course providing 'material support' for that organization in the form of monthly donation checks would itself be a prosecutable offense.

They might even come after YOU!

Needless to say he will dismiss such concerns as contrived and unlikely but the whole reason we like to refer to "blind justice" is because the key to the law is that it can stand independent of the identities of the perpetrators and victims. It's sad to note but the current debate over whether it's appropriate to try KSM in New York is based on simple bigotry. If there's any more evidence necessary then we need simply ask why the anthrax letters didn't result in wholesale detainee abuse and an unofficial declaration of war. (FBI stalking doesn't qualify!)