First they came for the Padillas

I could speak about the latest chapter in the sorry saga of the U.S. citizen chosen as “the demonstration project for the elected dictatorshipTM”, Jose Padilla, sentenced to 17 1/2 years more for a nebulous role in a nebulous plot where the jury heard the words “al Qaeda” and “Osama bin Laden” a lot… but Andy Worthington does it far more succinctly than I.
The most important case of our life times will now be appealed, and perhaps, no one will pay heed to the fact that all a President needs is enough public hysteria, and he can pick any of us up, torture us (43 months of isolation, sleep deprivation, loud noises and God knows what else)… and get away with it. And then have the real court system throw us away “officially”.
And yet, our “opposition party” in Congress, its candidates for President, even most of its cheerleaders here in left-blogistan… nary a word on this most basic of all outrages, which dwarfs in importance the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and is of the same order of magnitude in terms of moral and legal crises that the financial world is now feeling (interestingly, from the same causes, said causes living and working on Pennsylvania Avenue).