Okay, Here’s Something Meatier...

The Bush regime and its right-wing cronies in the House are determined to mold this nation into a police state — and not just a de facto police state, but a de jure one as well.

First, the decision to release Yaser Esam Hamdi because, whoops! Turns out we really don’t have any evidence to indicate that he’s a threat to national security. And those damned courts just won’t let us detain U.S. citizens at will. Hey, if this guy can actually challenge his detention, then we’d actually have to admit that we had no real reason to keep him in prison for three years. And if there’s one thing this administration does not do, it’s admit error.

And this coming on the heels of the dismissal of the one case we’d actually brought to trial after “detaining” more than 5,000 people in the wake of the September 11th attacks. And to have it dismissed because... well... we pretty much just made the whole case up... now, that’s really just embarrassing. Next thing you know, people might start thinking that when we use “trust us” as our entire justification for stripping away civil rights, we might not be entirely worthy of that trust (thanks to In Apprehension... for reminding me of the story).

Still, we’re gonna have to do something about those damned courts, though. Here we thought we’d stacked ’em as far to the right as was humanly possible, but they’re still causing too many problems. Really, this whole “checks and balances” thing is seeming like more trouble than it’s worth.

I’ve got it! Let’s just pass a law that says they can’t even hear certain cases. We used that whole “gay marriage” thing as a trial balloon, and now we’ll do it with the Pledge of Allegiance. And then the sky’s the limit! After all, if the courts aren’t allowed to hear any cases, then nobody will be able to challenge the law we just wrote! ’Cause to do that, they’d have to show that they were affected by it. Which they can’t, ’cause we just forbade the courts from listening to them! Great idea!

While we’re at it, why don’t we just pass a law declaring Duh-bya emperor, and canceling the Presidential election? Make it official. Just stick a rider in saying the courts can’t hear challenges to it, and we’re all set.

In other news, I rather enjoyed the latest Bush/Cheney campaign ad. Gotta make sure people know how wrong that other guy is for America...