This should be enough to give anyone pause: Alberto Gonzalez, the Attorney General of the United States of America argued before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Constitituion does not grant habeas corpus rights, but only says that they can be suspended. Let's think about this a little: Saying that a right can be suspended implicitly states that there is a right that can be suspended to begin with. Senator Arlen Specter, who headed up the committe, nearly went into a fitof apoplexy when he heard this after asking if Gonzalez's logic took a wrong turn at Albequerqe: "The Constitution …

There's been another disturbing development pertaining to the Forth Amendment recently, in that laptop computers may be seized for inspection without a warrant. This isn't the first time this has been in the news, but now a couple of precedents have been set in court, which is doubly worrisome; this was from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (United States v. Ziegler), and upholds statements in employment contracts that state that you have no privacy whatsoever if you're at work and using their equipment, and most of the time you don't have any privacy if you're using your own equipment …

This Saturday past, the Pentagon took a major leap sideways when it had to distance itself from one of its senior officials, one Charles "Cully" Stimson. Stimson went on the record during a radio interview as saying that US companies should boycott legal firms that employ lawyers who represent Guantanamo Bay detainees that are US citizens. He then went on to recite a list of a dozen legal firms that should be boycotted. When last I checked, if you were a US citizen you had the right to legal representation under the Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Lieutenant …