"It's a free country"
Most of you are probably aware of the recent suspension of Habeas Corpus . Senator Chris Dodd said it at least as well as I could:
This longstanding tradition of our country about to be abandoned here is one of the great, great mistakes that I think history will record.Reading about this for me is like gaping at a car wreck that you just can't turn away from. Here's how the vote went in the House and the Senate. In the past six years I've gotten used to the feeling of being embarrassed by my government, but I can no longer console myself that the executive is merely incompetent. I wonder how long it will take the phrase, "It's a free country," to fall out of circulation. It feels inadequate to mention any single notable and applicable quotation; There are so many, from Benjamin Franklin, George Orwell, Winston Churchill. What's amazing to me is that with the entire range of quotable and historic philosophers arrayed against this type of legislation, too few senators had the courage to stand against it to mount even a filibuster. I joined the ACLU today. Freedom apparantly can't protect itself.
