...for that.

That very frustration you describe is why so many people begin blogs... for one thing, you can "print" your entire letter to a senator or representative. Who knows who might find it in a google search.

The only thing worse-- i.e, even more like talking to a brick wall-- than writing letters to non-responsive senators and representatives, is writing letters to non-responsive newspaper editors.

I don't know where you live, but in some areas/regions, local bloggers are pretty good at banding together, sometimes even when they are at opposite ends of the political spectrum.

A little while ago, I posted a link to a panel discussion featuring Marcy Wheeler (of The Last Hurrah) and 3 other Michigan bloggers (2-left, 2-right) on a program (either) On (or Off) the Record. You can find it via google.

As part of a similar group, you might find that you get more responses from your elected representatives...

[Your screen name would be a great blog name, btw. A favorite movie of mine, and I love William Powell.]

casual_observer:

On April 27, 1861, habeas corpus was suspended by President Lincoln in Maryland and parts of midwestern states, including southern Indiana during the American Civil War. Lincoln did so in response to riots, local militia actions, and the threat that the border slave state of Maryland would secede from the Union, leaving the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., surrounded by hostile territory.

Thanks CO. That sounds exactly like our situation today! Versailles is surrounded, sorta.

Ironclad:

For those that pointed out that there was an insurrection when Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus - I agree, but it was targeted as much against dissenters (the Copperheads) as those actively supporting the South. I just wanted to make that point since I don't see MAC being used for those aims quite yet. (again - not in any way supporting that (mis)use of Presidential power here, folks!)

So, Lincoln took the extraordinary step of suspending our citizen's civil rights, and it was basically a useless exercise. We should follow this example (except in a far more widespread and unclear manner)-- why?

If the Congress can't or won't do something about this and spends it time passing Retroactive Un-Allowing the War bills then it's possible that entire system or the people in it had irretrievably broken down.

I've never seen such a complete butchery of written english as bloody as this.

The worst part is I think s/he was trying to communicate a real sentiment here, but I've no idea what it was.

Perhaps s/he is having a medication malfunction or they were a 'guest' at Camp X-Ray for a bit. Certainly Winston Smith wasn't much better when he was released from the Ministry of Love.

"The first essential step on the road to total domination is to kill the juridicial person in man. This was done, on the one hand, by putting certain catergories of people outside the protection of the law and forcing at the same time, through the instrument of denationalization, the nontotalitarian world into recognition of lawlessness; it was done, on the other hand, by placing the concentration camp outside the normal penal sytem, and by selecting its inmates outsdie the normal judicial procedure in which a definite crime entails a predictable penalty." - Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

GITMO was created as an extralegal concentration camp. Period. We now know that the majority of the people held there were held in error, that our gov't knew that, but kept them anyway because it didn't want to look bad. Regardless, the guilty and innocent alike have not been treated justly or given anything that one might remotely consider due process.

The CIA had a secret gulag prison system which was also outside of the law.

These are totalitarian devices. And we have an American public that says, "eh, I'm ok with it. Terrorists deserve it."

So the lawlessnes abroad starts to come home but people don't notice it. They don't notice that "detention" centers are being built in the US.

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/05/hiding-our-shame.html

Or that Halliburton has contingency contracts to build more "detention" centers on US soil in case the President declares an emergency. We have GOP frontrunner candidates that when asked if they believe the President has the power of a dictator they say they have to give it some consideration.

We have a media - attacked for its "liberal" bias - which helped the administration wage a psy-ops war on the American public in order to wage an illegal war (illegal on two counts: 1.fraud of Congress 2. violation of the U.N. Charter) which continues to promote the prevailing "Versailles" power structure of Washington and continues to head down the road to Foxification ... with the owner of the GOP's chief propaganda arm Fox News now set to purchase the Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal.

We have a press culture that believes that pointing out the government is working tirelessly to end American democracy is "ideological" partisanship and that Brit Hume is objective but that Keith Olberman is biased.

"It's an easy step from restraining the press to making it place the worst actions of government in so favorable a light that we may groan under tyranny and oppression without knowing from whence it comes." - Cinncinatus, Nov. 2, 1787

But hey ... you know what? At least I know that Alec Baldwin and David Hasselhoff are bad fathers, and that Paris Hilton is going to jail. And that Willa Ford will be playing Anna Nicole Smith in the tele-movie of her life. And the NBA playoffs ... man, can you beleive the Warriors knocked off the Mavs!

Awesome post. Outstanding. Thank you for that post.

As an aside, I'm happy to be the first to admit (and if this makes me an idiot, so be it) that, despite the fact that RealName's posts are composed in English, I can't understand them. Is anyone else experiencing this?

No kings,

Robert

The right-wing point that "everything is different now" is unalloyed bullshit. Not because we're not facing a cell-based insurgency, but because you can not win militarily against a committed insurgency. The only way to win militarily is to simply kill them all. Ever last man of fighting age.

What have we seen, historically? Well, we had operation Condor in the Cone region of S. America. They committed atrocities against civilian populations in order to eliminate left-wing insurgency - threw men and women out of planes, killed families, the whole gamut. Well, what has happened? The leadership in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay are to one extent or another allied or directly involved in those very groups. The same thing has happened in Central America.

How does one win, short of massacring the civilian population? By changing the conditions under which the insurgency gains popular support. Setting up a power sharing government in N. Ireland, improving the economy in Peru, and so on. At best, intelligence and military actions are holding actions, to create enough space temporarily to allow the institution of new systems that address the political problems which allow the insurgency to gain popular support.

That's been known now for generation. It's an almost trivial truth. If we want to end ME inspired violence, we have to massively invest in the ME. Otherwise, there will always be a knew crop of terrorists who can hide among the population. We will slowly erode our rights more and more to continue this warfare, and in the end the results will be identical to what would have happened if we had properly invested our resources know.

Well, there's always that other choice of genocide.