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[beowabbit]

Garrison Keillor on the rule of law, habeas corpus, and evil.

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Idea. Mark their names. Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees to these people forfeits its honor.

And he follows that with a list of names.

(To be fair, I think legislators who vote to allow people accused of crimes to be tortured and held incommunicado indefinitely do still get to look down on bureaucrats and politicians who sent millions to their deaths, but it was several years between the Ermächtigungsgesetz and the Holocaust, and frankly I don’t want to see what this particular bunch of tinpot dictators do with another ten years. In any case those legislators certainly don’t get to speak about the rule of law or lecture me about American values.)

Comments

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

Thanks for passing this along; I was glad to see it.

Garrison Keillor is so mild-mannered most of the time that when he gets angry, it feels more potent than when your average always-angry activist gets angry.

I'm amazed that there doesn't seem to be more comment about the fact that The United States of America has more or less ceased to exist and has been replaced by a different country with the same name. Habeas Corpus isn't just a little frill beloved of liberals; it's the very foundation of any kind of just court system.

I'm really sorry that McCain caved. How did they bring around a former prisoner of war, for god's sake?

Maybe they'll start throwing people into the pond, and if they sink, they're innocent (but drowned), and if they float, they're guilty (and slated for execution).

I can't talk about this anymore; it hurts too much.