The Day Habeus Corpus Died

Olbermann smacks another out of the park:

And check out Olbermann's special commentary from later in the show:

There's not much I would add to Olbermann's commentary on this issue. Our political leaders have behaved shamefully. Their names will echo down the ages as exemplars of moral cowardice and betrayal of the American way. As Quisling came to mean collaborator who sells his people to a foreign oppressor, McCain will come to mean capitulator who surenders his nation's freedom to an internal enemy.

But more important than this, is national shame we will feel when we finally discover all that has been done in our names, and under the pretense of protecting us from terror. It will likely be many years before the full story of how this Administration has broken our laws and shamed their Constitutional oaths. As Professor Turley points out, we once prosecuted as war crimes some of the techniques of torture we've now legalized. And that's only what we know about.

Some will say that we mustn't be naive. We must use all means available to protect ourselves. They're wrong. Democracies always fight with one hand behind their back, as it were. We do this because we believe that the rule of law is indispensible to civilized existence. Without legal restraints, we are no better than our enemies. It is our way of life that is worth preserving; without that, our lives mean nothing.

"Give me liberty or give me death." Perhaps it has been too long since Americans have tasted the lash of tyranny for many to understand the moral force of those words: perhaps it won't be long now before Americans will rediscover that oppression makes liberty more precious than life. And perhaps, too, they will once again realize that the worst tyranny doesn't come from a foriegn enemy, but from within.

Comments

[Dwight D. Leister: Chair: Committee To Elect]

I just listened as a CNN reporter sitting in the back of a truck driven by the Iraq insergency reported a Iraq sniper's step by step actions to shoot an American Marine as he sat in a Humvee!

CNN just committed murder and taped it proudly playing it on the National Media outlets as an American Family lost a family member!

Where is Rumsfeld; where is President Bush where is anyone who gives a damn?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CNN should be pulled from Iraq immediatly and this guy tried for War Crimes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If the President and both Political Parties support this CRAP they BOTH do NOT deserve to be elected to anything!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I urge everyone to vote for neither the Republican or Democratic Party and vote for anyone else with a brain and kick there butts out of Washington!!!!!!!!!!!

I urge the American public to stop shopping at the Mall and Take America back at the heart of its corruption Washington DC!!!!!!!

[azwildcat88]

Umm, I think you need to lay off of the drugs, or start taking your meds, leister. The CNN report was a reporter desrcibing a video that the insurgency filmed. The CNN reporter wasn't there.

Even if he was, this is a war, as GWB reminds us, and having a reporter cover the other side is not unusual.