I wasn’t expecting to launch into another political rant so soon, but I was flabbergasted to read this evening that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales casually eliminated habeas corpus from the list of Constitutional protections Americans have enjoyed for the last couple of centuries. Despite more than, oh, about eight fucking centuries of legal precedent and tradition amongst the English-speaking peoples, this poisonous little toady asserted that since there is no explicit right to a writ of habeas corpus, it must, ipso facto, not exist.

Never mind the fact that the Founders considered habeas corpus so fundamental to the concept of liberty and legal custom that it is mentioned in Article I of the Constitution. Never mind that the Constitution states that the protection of the Great Writ is to be the default state of things. And don’t try and use the "in Case of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it" line as a means to justify this latest assault on American freedoms.

The blanket condition of a vague, unspecified threat to our security is not, should not, must never be used to justify the permanent elimination of fundamental legal protections. Under such a rubric, there can never be freedom. Franklin’s oft-quoted maxim about liberty and security seems never to have been heard by the gang of criminal absolutists running the White House.

The Bush Administration plainly seeks to create a state where executive power is supreme, and security trumps law; thousands of years of human history has shown time and time again, however, that where the rule of law is not cherished, there can exist no true security.