Top 10 Signs You Live in a Police State

[MosesPresley]

Originally posted by Wiglaf


What rights have Americans given up, exactly? You don't seem to have any idea, you can't cite specific laws or court cases to justify any of this.

Khalid El-Masri

Abu Omar

Both kidnapped and sent to black site prisons without any due process.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by MosesPresley


I'm being a little reactionary, but I am not proposing wide scale change. The Bush regime has already instituted wide scale change. I simply want our constitutional rights to be protected and expanded where necessary.
You hit the nail on the head though with the OP. My OP was too broad, but I thought all of these little discussions about each right, that we are missing the forest for the trees. Taken together, I do see them as a basic loss of freedom.

What strikes me as scary is how quickly everyone wants to give up their rights, just so they can have the illusion of safety. This is the land of the free, right? Then let us be free. Freedom has its costs, and one of those costs is less safety.

Thinking that either freedom is generally better than security (you could call it many things), or that security is generally better than freedom is problematic, because the human tendency is to go overboard with one or the other and then turn around and do a 180 towards the other one. That's why I question your idea that losing some freedoms means that we are headed towards a police state.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by MosesPresley


Khalid El-Masri

Abu Omar

Both kidnapped and sent to black site prisons without any due process.

Was there due process for the Americans who posed as MPs for the Nazis before the battle of the bulge?

due process has never been extended to non uniformed (or otherwise out of uniform) enemy combatants.

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by MosesPresley


Khalid El-Masri

Abu Omar

Both kidnapped and sent to black site prisons without any due process.

I said Americans

Padilla is an exception and his case is in the courts. Quite public, really.

of course, the fact that the latter two examples were struck down by the courts as a violation of your rights argues against the police state assertion of the OP.

[MosesPresley]

Originally posted by Wiglaf

What a pompous statement . Losing 3,000 civilians in one day is an unprecedented loss of innocent life, and the idea that terrorists can get their hands on a nuke and kill millions more is enough to justify suspending habeas corpus for some combatants of terror governments.

It isn't pompous at all. 9/11: 3000 dead and the Civil War: 618,00 dead, are not even close to the same thing and that was my point, of which I'm pretty sure I made clear. You are being intellectually dishonest.

[MosesPresley]

Originally posted by Wiglaf


I said Americans

Padilla is an exception and his case is in the courts. Quite public, really.

I gave you a case: Jose Padilla. The man was denied his rights for years.

[MosesPresley]

Originally posted by Geronimo


Was there due process for the Americans who posed as MPs for the Nazis before the battle of the bulge?

due process has never been extended to non uniformed (or otherwise out of uniform) enemy combatants.

Comparisons of us to the Nazis is ludicrous. I give up. There's nothing wrong here. The US is perfect and 100% just. USA! USA! USA!

[Wiglaf]

I gave you a case: Jose Padilla. The man was denied his rights for years.

He has since been convicted by a federal jury and sentenced to 20 years in jail by a federal judge

If all you can produce is one US citizen -- out of 280 million -- who was temporarily denied habeas corpus in an extreme situation (I mean, he was guilty and had knowledge of a potentially catastrophic plot), then your **** out of luck I'm afraid.

[MosesPresley]

I agree with you his rights were finally recognized by the courts, but I don't agree that it was an extreme situation. From what I understand the guy was an idiot with no chance of realizing his plot. It was to make the Bush admin look tough on terror after the 9/11 mess up.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by MosesPresley


Comparisons of us to the Nazis is ludicrous. I give up. There's nothing wrong here. The US is perfect and 100% just. USA! USA! USA!

giving up is ok.

Comparing al-qaida terrorists to nazis seems perfectly appropriate. What makes the nazis who participated in operation Grief beyond comparison to terrorists? What justifies the double standard?

But, regardless, how does your capitulation in this thread suddenly imply the US is perfect?

Is the world neatly divided into perfect states and police states?

[Patroklos]

Was there due process for the Americans who posed as MPs for the Nazis before the battle of the bulge?

You said that wrong, and it looks like that confused him. It was Nazis who posed as American MPs at the battle of the bulge.

It is not a perfect example though, as they were not only not in their own uniforms but caught in the enemy's uniforms making them spys.

In many cases this is applicable to al Queda insurgets, but in usually doesn't matter because 1.) they are non state actors engaged in hostilities which is a violation all its own and 2.) they are belligerents not clearly marked as such which is a violation all its own.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Patroklos


You said that wrong, and it looks like that confused him. It was Nazis who posed as American MPs at the battle of the bulge.

It is not a perfect example though, as they were not only not in their own uniforms but caught in the enemy's uniforms making them spys.

In many cases this is applicable to al Queda insurgets, but in usually doesn't matter because 1.) they are non state actors engaged in hostilities which is a violation all its own and 2.) they are belligerents not clearly marked as such which is a violation all its own.

IIRC there were a couple US nationals involved who had gone over to the third reich before US entry into the war.

[MosesPresley]

I did misunderstand you. Nazis wouldn't be declared "illegal enemy combatants" under the current definition, I think.

We'll have to agree to disagree on the legal status of terrorists. Although you guys have given me some more to think about as to their legal rights under US law.

My point about this and I don't think I was very clear about it, was that, these exceptions on legal rights for terrorists often come back to haunt ordinary citizens. Jose Padilla's rights were eventually recognized, but it took years.

Look at the RICO act for example. This law was to help catch organized criminals, yet the property seizure portion is used against minor drug dealers constantly. A person caught with a few bags of drugs in his mother's house, marijuana for example, will have his mother's house sezied under the pretense of "maintaining a dwelling for the distribution of drugs". Where in the example I am giving, the guy is just a poor schmuck who lives in his parent's house and is small time dealer. Again this is an anecdotal example to illustatrate how these things mutate from their original intentions. I read about these arrests every day in my local paper.

My point is these things always go to far and affect the unintended group of people.

[Qilue]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
What a pompous statement . Losing 3,000 civilians in one day is an unprecedented loss of innocent life, and the idea that terrorists can get their hands on a nuke and kill millions more is enough to justify suspending habeas corpus for some combatants of terror governments.

The emboldened part is pure scare-mongering. I seriously doubt even the craziest Al-Qaeda terrorist would want to let that genie out of the bottle.

Doing so would start a global man-hunt on a scale never before seen in history and they would have no where to run. Even the most pro Al-Qaeda government isn't likely to give them safe haven under threat of becoming a nuclear target.

[Wiglaf]

You have to be kidding, right? If terrorists had the bomb it would be in DC overnight. If state sponsors are careful enough, they can avoid detection or at least blame 'rogue elements' to avoid full nuclear retaliation.