Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[Tom Lord]

    > From: Florian Weimer <address@hidden>

    > * Tom Lord:

    > >   ~ everyone agrees that we are a nation at war;  many agree that
    > >     during wartime, some suspension of normal rights is a necessity

    > Really?  Did invading Iraq change this feeling, or was it the same
    > before?

Well, it has happened before in various ways (e.g., Lincoln suspending
habeas corpus during the civil war; the internment of
Japanese-Americans during WWII; domestic surveillance during the Viet
Nam war).  The courts have traditionally been pretty sympathetic to
the idea.  There is then large amounts of retrospective recognition
that these things were wrong but then, bam, they come up again with
each new conflict.

This time around it was the attack on 9/11 that triggered it.   The
administration responded by whipping out the patriot act (which had
evidently been on a shelf awaiting such an event) and then later,
promoting legal theories to justify Guantanamo and similar.

-t