Ya know, Garrison, you can't trust nobody nowadays..watch out for the boogie man under your bed. He's watching your every move.

As for me, I'm gonna wrap my house in tin foil to stop them bad guys from finding out that I have a mind.

Seriously, though, a lot of our laws are to prevent premeditating a crime-and it doesn't stop many people, even now. Remember, the guys in 9/11 weren't exactly playing by the rules, either; nor were they citizens.

What Cheney doesn't realize that not everyone is a Republican, or a law abiding Christian. Some of us are "heathen revolutionaries intent on destroying the country". So get rid of that damned Constitution and that solves the problem of us "independent thinkers."

Throw us all in prison, and then they'll have to come up with new ways to pay for new prisons!

Ah, to hell with them. We'll outlast the jackboots-it will take time, but it will end eventually.

I just hope I'm alive when it happens.

Brilliant, Mr. K. As usual, you hit the nail on the head.

Within a few weeks after September 11, 2001, I and other friends of mine were muttering darkly about Orwell and the thought police, since folks were already being jumped on for talking or just thinking things that were not "approved". The jingoist tenor of the times meant that many people laughed or cursed at us for daring to speak such thoughts (proving our point with unasked-for alacrity). These days those who say such things get world-weary nods instead of dirty looks. Can't say as it's any better, for what it says about how bad things have gotten.

Thanks for the laugh. Here's hoping it'll remain just that, and not a cause for the same kind of sighs and bitter disappointment in our country.

Very entertaining, as you often are, except for the weasel-worded disclaimer.

Get Real! Anyone who publishes anything is begging others to read it, just as I am asking others to read this by posting a letter.

When they come to take you away for conspiracy, the prosecutor will justifiably argue that you must have had a reasonable expectation that your work could be read by anyone, including the crazed nut who tries to burn down Crawford, Texas after reading your ravings about the Current Occupant.

You could publish in a $1,000 per year specialty journal if you wanted to restrict readership.

I keep a diary. My wife and children, or even a good friend, are welcome to read it. Its purpose is to preserve things in my heart and head that I might forget later, for us, the kids and grandkids that might be interested when I am gone. I geniunely do not intend for YOU to read it, so it resides on an encrypted partition of my hard drive.

If I posted my diary on the Web and my employer decided to fire me because he did not appreciate my leaking confidential information, I could not blame him.

Before the State can deprive a man of his liberty under our constitution, the State has to prove the elements of a crime - a particular act at a particular time and at a particular place. The proof has to be logical, and the jury's duty is solely to test the logic of the case in the same way a teacher of geometry grades a proof.

Geometry teachers are familiar with having a good percentage of her students beginning every proof with the conclusion. The Martha Stewart jury did that. Ms. Stewart lied to the authorities to cover up something or the other.

My observation is that juries, like children, do what they think society wants them to do. I suspect that this was true with Padilla. The jury affirmed society's disfavor with terrorists. It is far more likely that the government manufactured a case for PR purposes than that Mr. Padilla was a threat to us. If so the jury was wrong - Big Time.

I thank Mr. Keillor for challenging the jury in the Padilla case. Maybe somebody can write a piece on exactly what was the particular crime at a particular time in a particular place. Is wanting to boil in oil Bush and Cheney a crime?

Nobody was ever indicted for watering plants.

Actually if you have enough of them, watering plants can get you life:

http://norml.org/index.cfm?wtm_view=&Group_ID=4575

The relationship related only with hatred. The drought of August 2008 in Minneapolis was at its peak. Watering restrictions had been in place for ten days. At night, during the water restrictions, neighbor A snuck over to neighbor B’s hollyhocks, that formed a right angled border with neighbor A’s front lawn, and deluged them with water.

Neighbor B’s pride had him believing his expert gardening skills had produced such resilient, luxurious plants. He smiled snidely when glancing at Neighbor A’s spindly hollyhocks.

Neighbor A used his telephone to complain to the local police about his neighbor using precious water on decorative flora. This, of course, led to an indictment of Neighbor B for watering plants.

Keillor, whose radio broadcasts are so gentle and genuinely entertaining, can really lose it when it comes to politics on the internet. To use his own metaphors, the combination of internet politics Keillor is like Baptists and alcohol. They generally either remain strictly and safely on the wagon, or else they end up face down in the gutter. There's no easy in-between.

So here's a cold shower of reality for Keillor and his Salon friends, from today's Wall Street Journal opinion page:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110010505

The author of that Wall Street Journal opinion column is Michael Mukasey. Mr. Mukasey was the United Sates District judge who signed the material witness warrant authorizing the arrest of Jose Padilla a/k/a al Muhajir in 2002, and who handled the case while it remained in the Southern District of New York. He was also the trial judge in United States v. Abdel Rahman et al; the original World Trade Center bombing case. He is now retired from the federal bench.

Really, sometimes Keillor and his NPR cohorts are just so far removed from reality, that it concerns me that their programs share the airwaves with NPR News.