Michael Ignatieff picked a hell of a week to suggest (in The New York Times Magazine) that we all "step outside the confines of our cozy conservative and liberal boxes" and consider managing the curtailment of civil liberties. My favorite suggestion:

Bruce Ackerman, a liberal law professor at Yale, has recently proposed a wholesale revision of the president's current power to declare a national emergency, suggesting that if terrorists strike again, the president should be given the authority to act unilaterally for a week and to arrest anyone he sees fit. After a week, Congress would have to vote to renew his powers for a period of 60 days. Thereafter, an overwhelming majority would be required to extend the term further. Better to formalize and control emergency power, Ackerman argues, than to allow the president to slowly accumulate the power of tyranny.

These guys are kidding, right? Do they really believe that, in the wake of a deadly stateside terrorist attack, Congress would be ready after a week (or even after sixty days) to curtail Executive Branch power with regard to "evildoers"? Even a week is a long time for the White House to have the power to order anything it wants done to anyone it chooses, perhaps including

Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

If this proposal became law today, the current White House would break ground on one or more stateside Abu Ghraibs tomorrow, just to be ready for any eventuality.

And who would the detainees be? If such a law had been in place at the time of the Olympic bombing, could Richard Jewell have been detained without judicial oversight? If that seems far-fetched, imagine something like the Olympic bombing in, as they say, "the current climate."

And in the current climate, how hard is it to imagine that a splinter group's violent anti-globalization activities might lead to a widespread unsupervised roundup of even nonviolent globalization opponents? And what if, as we approach the overturn of Roe, a few pro-choicers turn violent? Do you give much money to Planned Parenthood or NOW or NARAL?