NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgement of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.

Magna Carta, 1215 [a later translation into English was used for this quotation; one minor spelling correction has been applied]

True, the colonies decided to depart from the Motherland in 1776. And clearly only now did they finalise the step by throwing out any decency and all the rights once granted by a king.

Here's a little item about how those dangerous terrorists revert to their evil deeds as soon as they are free of Gitmo:

Where's Pentagon 'terrorism suspect'? Talking to Karzai

Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil displays documents he says prove he's not a terrorist, despite six years as Detainee 798 at Guantanamo.

By Nancy A. Youssef | McClatchy Newspapers

KABUL, Afghanistan — Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil spends his days going from one high-level official meeting to another with the swagger of a tribal elder, advocating for the needs of Kunar province, his home region.

Each encounter — with President Hamid Karzai, with Karzai's chief of staff or with one of Afghanistan's other presidential candidates — begins the same: They thank him for his honorable service to the people of Kunar.

Despite those endorsements, the Pentagon says that Wakil is among 74 former Guantanamo Bay detainees who've returned to or are suspected of returning to terrorism after their release from the island prison camp.

link @ sig

Certainly, the rule of law is an ideal that the US of A has never reached. That is no reason to deviate from it even further. Nor to deny that the semblance of rule of law that the US has is preferable to the alternative of none at all. One just has to have lived in a somewhat more lawless place to appreciate what we have here.

One could equally well sneer at human frailty and ask what liberty do such miserable creatures deserve.

The nihilists are as dangerous to us as an out-of-control President.

I wonder if it would profit you to call a temporary cease-fire from your manly insurrection against reason for a moment? Let us see.

I have some difficulty compreheanding your simple equation, guns=liberty. Has it ever occured to you that of the approximately 15,000 American citizens who were killed by firearms last year none found this to be a route to "liberty" unless as means of suicide?

Another way of examining your bold insinuation that "big guns" are required to frighten our neighboors into granting us "liberty", we might like to consider an alternative method of dealing with other people, even perhaps listening to them before drawing firearms?

Some crazed "liberals" might even suggest that it is our "big guns" themselves that hold us captive, as we are certainly at the mercy of their violence. This condundrum is related I think to troubles we have been confronted with while undertaking to "liberate Irac" which is to say obtaining peace by waging war. Another doubtful application of reason to the use of firearms is the respectably conservative aspiration of advancing the theory of democracy by the practice of mass murder, which you might like to posit by another equation, democracy=genocide. Or how about this, security=torture?

Whatever the outcome of your deliberations on these questions I maintain that you are certainly clear on one point. I can see the wisdom of your casting aspersions on "school" as it is obvious from your letters you were much too clever to ever waste any time there.

Certainly, the rule of law is an ideal that the US of A has never reached.

That is the reason to deviate from it towards an ideal of an unpolitical and more empathetic rule of law!

Denying that the semblance of rule of law that the US has is preferable to the alternative of

none at all would be foolish and one doesn't have to live in a somewhat more lawless place to appreciate what we have here.

And it makes no sense to ponder if nihilists are more ore less dangerous than doomsday-prophets who are talking about out-of-control Presidents!

I'm thinking about a President who doesn't even have the power to pass a decent climate or health care bill - What happened to the idea that we elect a wise man like Jefferson or Adams

and they don't follow the rule of the idiots?

and you can't argue it's about collecting information. When I first heard those numbers I thought it would forever stop anyone from suggesting the torture was legit. Wrong again. The Alice in Wonderland analogy is so appropriate.

If we had a SCOTUS worth more than spit, Obama's (or Bush's) violations of our Constitution would be quickly thrown out. The problem is also that SCOTUS, or its majority, are not worth spit.

But it's not a "problem" for the oligarchs. [And it's no longer just the Republicans.

The Impact of Authoritarian Conservatism On American Government: Part Three in a Three-Part Series

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20070925.html

By JOHN W. DEAN

This is the final part of this three-part series of columns, in which FindLaw columnist John Dean discusses his recent book, Conservatives Without Conscience.

"[...] The authoritarianism of the contemporary Republican Party has had a dire impact on all three branches of the federal government. This impact is the subject of my new book, Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches, and a matter I intend to write about periodically in this space as we approach the 2008 Election. [...]"

The Queen's pronouncement -- "Sentence first -- verdict afterward" -- is a fine expression of Obama's approach here -- Glenn Greenwald

This is true, and the entire post plus the updates is Horace's own truth. However, there is much more. The following is from a year ago or more, but is still worth reading:

"Law and order conservatives" wrongly believe that the justice (sic) system is run by liberal judges who turn the criminals loose. In actual fact, the system is so loaded against a defendant that very few people, including the totally innocent, dare to risk a trial. Almost all (95–97%) felony indictments are settled by a coerced plea. By withholding exculpatory evidence, suborning perjury, fabricating evidence, and lying to jurors, prosecutors have made the risks of a trial too great even for the innocent. Consequently, the prosecutors’ cases and police evidence are almost never tested in court. Defendants are simply intimidated into self-incrimination rather than risk the terrors of trial.

According to Yale University law professor John Langbein, "The parallels between the modern American plea bargaining system and the ancient system of judicial torture are many and chilling." Just as the person on the rack admitted to guilt in order to stop the pain, the present day defendant succumbs to psychological torture and cops a plea, whether he is innocent or guilty, in order to avoid ever more charges.

Michael Tonry, director of Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology, reports that the US has the highest percentage of its population in prison than any country on earth, including dictatorships, tyrannies, and China. The US incarceration rate is up to 12 times higher than that of European countries. ...

... from an essay by Paul Roberts

From ancient wisdom comes the idea that as long as anyone is being railroaded none of us can truly enjoy our own freedom. For this reason, I declare that the biggest threat to America is her military, but the second largest threat is her out of control prosecutors.

If you are ever so moved Glenn, an essay on the overall state of the American justice system would be welcome here by many I bet.