from Jesus' General
If you found the military knocking on your door in the middle of the night, what would you do? You might not have many choices about what to do if the president has authorized them to sweep your neighborhood because Bush has assumed the authority to use the military in "anti-terrorism" efforts without the oversight of the courts. Your home could be searched and you can be taken into custody without warrant. You wouldn't be able to assume that you'd be provided with the niceties of civilized societies like lawyers, a judge, or a court of law.
Perhaps if the military appears at your door, you should be thankful that they are knocking and haven't already knocked the door in. It wasn't that long ago — ah, the good old days — when speculations about sending the military to conduct warrantless searches and arrests would have been limited to just the the farthest extremes of nutty conspiracy theorists. In today's climate, such speculations sound almost conservative in nature.
We don't have a Congress that is quite craven enough to pass a law giving Bush dictatorial powers, but we have a president arrogant and authoritarian enough to ignore the parts of the laws he doesn't like, to amend them to his liking, and to interpret them in whatever manner is most consistent with his desire to act without checks, balances, or oversight. How so? According to a footnote in a John Yoo memo, his office had concluded that "the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations."
More after the click ...
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