Defending the Constitution

Obsidian Wings: "We can debate whether we should suspend central parts of the Constitution in the name of security when we have exhausted every other means of keeping ourselves safe, and found them inadequate. But even if we conclude that we should, scrapping habeas corpus and the right to counsel should, I think, be an absolute last resort, not the first thing that leaps to mind. And one of the things that bothers me about the Bush administration is that there are so many other things they have not done to keep us safe. They have left tons of fissile material unsecured in Russia, a country which is disintegrating before our eyes. They have, as far as I can tell, no serious plan to deal with other nuclear proliferation threats. Outside aviation, they have not made anything like an adequate effort to secure our transportation, our infrastructure, our borders, and our nation as a whole from terrorist attacks. And these are not subtle, difficult-to-think-of steps: they are completely obvious steps to take if one wants to secure our nation."