Eight For 08

For my first post, first a few disclaimers/identifiers: I live in Nevada, and due to our ratcheted up early Democratic caucus date, I’m probably more into this race than I have been previously, at least this early in the game. More importantly, I am a civil rights/civil liberties attorney for the ACLU.

It is hard for me to focus on much else: I obsessively watched for references to civil liberties in the Dems debate. While I consider abortion a civil liberties issue and am heartened to see discussions of traditional civil rights memes such as equal opportunity, I am most focused on what I consider to be the greatest threat to the American people - namely, specific restrictions on liberty in the name of the ‘war on terror.’ (For the record, no one mentioned them in South Carolina. In NH, Obama gave them a nod, Edwards mentioned them briefly).

I didn’t have to look so hard during the Republican debates. Guiliani and Romney fell all over themselves to out-anti-civil liberties themselves (from Romney’s “Double Guantanamo” to Guiliani’s relentless fear-mongering). Even Chris Matthews, of whom I am NO great fan, has publicly said (OK, maybe he’s flirting w/ Ben Affleck) that he agrees that Guiliani’s tactics are themselves the heart of what terrorism aims to accomplish - that is, giving the terrorists what they want by changing our fundamental American values (hence the title of this post). Check it out: Hardball.

While it’s no bombshell that civil libertarians view internal threats to our liberties as the Real terrorist threat, it’s nice to see it appearing sporadically in the corporate media. And while I reel at the shamelessness of Romney’s and Giuliani’s race to the bottom of the Bill of Rights, it’s nice at least one of their compatriots takes our constitutional rights seriously. If it takes a racist, anti-choice, Texan psycho to provide a foil for the civil liberties ‘mala fides’ of our anointed Eight, I’m all for it. I leave you with Ron Paul:

I would work very hard to protect the privacy of American citizens, being very, very cautious about warrantless searches, and I would guarantee that I would never abuse habeas corpus.