Friday, February 05, 2010

Oh, Matt, Matt, Smart Smart and Still You're Dumb:

Yglesias:

The underlying issue here, as I’ve been saying, is that conservatives think that any constraint on the state security apparatus is too much. They believe, contrary to all of the evidence, that the rule-bound criminal justice system can’t or doesn’t function and that things would be better if we scrapped all the rules. And, indeed, in the civilian context they’ve worked steadily and systematically over a period of decades to weaken the constitutional protections as much as possible, and bring us as close as possible to their dream scenario of limitless state-sponsored violence. The desire to push certain categories of people (non-citizens) or certain categories of suspects (terrorists) out of the constitutionally protected realm is just part-and-parcel of that broad-based assault on the idea of a rule-bound justice system.


Entire Conservative Bloggosphere (Paraphrase)

Jackbooted thugs have tweeted James O'Keefe's rights away. The Secret Service tries to kill important right wing blogger. Atrios says it best:

Conservative hatred of a civilized system of justice is based on their "othering" of criminals. The instant they feel the jack-booted thugs of the state of treated them or someone like them unfairly the squealing is deafening.


To get back to the issue at hand: this is why we can't have nice things in this country. Because our opponents are simply totally unprincipled and lack any sense that a society based on law can't function if the laws can be suspended on a whim.

aimai

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