""All misgovernment is contrary to self-interest in the long run, but may actually strengthen a regime temporarily. It qualifies as folly when it is a perverse persistence in a policy demonstrably unworkable or counterproductive." (Barbara Tuchman, "The March of Folly", a great book. A super-great book, about a number of governmental follies in the last 3,000 years.)

Not saying a country shouldn't vigorously protect itself. It must. And in a manner which acknowledges reality, has a chance of "working".

One of the things which makes this country great is our Bill of Rights, designed to protect the individual against the unrestrained power of the government. A foreign power running the US could arrest a US citizen, hold him or her without charges, for as long as it wanted, without benefit of attorney or the court.

And now this Administration can do that, and does do that. We have done to ourselves what we are afraid others would do to us.

(And Rumsfeld, who said he wouldn't lie to us, said this power would not be used against an American citizen. Two months later it was, and is.)

Very scary. Not Rumsfeld lying, that's a given. The process is scary.

Arf