It can't be understated how antithetical a "preventive detention" system is to democracy.

What it does is create two categories of persons: those who have basic civil liberties and those who do not.

Are gov't was created with the premise that the gov't's legitimacy springs from the recognition that its purpose is to guarantee , inalienable, fundamental human rights. Preventive detention alters that dynamic; it means that those rights are indeed alienable, that government is granting rights.

That is why it so dangerous to establish a "national security court" which operates largely in secret and parallel to our legal system in order to inprison enemies of the "homeland" indefinitely without trial. It provides a means of subverting and/or circumventing the rule of law.

Wife: Arrest him!

More: For what?

Wife: He's dangerous!

Roper: For all we know he's a spy!

Daughter: Father, that man's bad!

More: There's no law against that!

Roper: There is, God's law!

More: Then let God arrest him!

Wife: While you talk he's gone!

More: And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law!

Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down - and you're just the man to do it - do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

-- A Man for All Seasons, Act 1 Scene 6, Robert Bolt

I listened to a few minutes of Michael Savage this afternoon. A few minutes being the absolute maximum amount of time that I can subject myself to Savage in one sitting. He was extremely pleased that the Senate Democrats blocked all the ruthless pure evil terrorists from running wild in the United States. Obviously, Savage and his audience will now be voting for Democrats. I'm sure they will.

Seriously, how sick and perverted is it that despite historic electoral losses resulting -at the least - from the noxious psuedo-conservatism of the conservative movement we still have the Senate Majority leader opposing the end to Gitmo, giving reasons that are nearly indistinguishable from the very persons who are driving people out of the Republican party by their repugnant rhetoric.

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2008/08/07/fox-news%E2%80%99-%E2%80%98free-speech-activist%E2%80%99-is-infamous-extremist/

While there are many individuals and groups that think the prosecution of Steyn harms free speech in Canada — including PEN Canada and the Canadian Association of Journalists — Fox News correspondent Steve Brown chose to interview a decidedly odd source: Paul Fromm, who was very sparingly identified on the broadcast as a “Free Speech Activist.” That’s a pretty weak, not to say completely misleading, description of Paul Fromm. As anyone who lives in Canada or who has access to Google should know, Fromm is Canada’s most notorious extremist, whose views form a trifecta of hate: he’s a white supremacist, a Holocaust denier and an anti-Semite. And he’s got a history of extremism a mile long.

“What we are seeing is an effort by minority groups, including in this case radical Muslims, to shut down criticism and that’s what it is,” Fromm, who habitually mocks Muslims, once calling a Muslim woman “a hag in a bag” while participating in a conference put on by former Klansman David Duke, told FOX about the Steyn investigations. At a 2007 meeting of racists and Holocaust deniers in Atlanta, Fromm pulled the Muslim hate card again, labeling Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama “a crypto-Moslem of mixed parentage.”

I don't know about you, but in my experience, cryto-fascists like Fromm aren't particularly interested in free speech.