Even a stopped clock....

In the past, I have dismissed Gore Vidal as a pedantic blowhard. But this interview with LA Weekly contains ample food for thought. Notable quote:

We are talking about despotism. I have read not only the first PATRIOT Act but also the second one, which has not yet been totally made public nor approved by Congress and to which there is already great resistance. An American citizen can be fingered as a terrorist, and with what proof? No proof. All you need is the word of the attorney general or maybe the president himself. You can then be locked up without access to a lawyer, and then tried by military tribunal and even executed. Or, in a brand-new wrinkle, you can be exiled, stripped of your citizenship and packed off to another place not even organized as a country — like Tierra del Fuego or some rock in the Pacific. All of this is in the USA PATRIOT Act. [See note below -- Felix] The Founding Fathers would have found this to be despotism in spades. And they would have hanged anybody who tried to get this through the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Hanged.

Note: Vidal is apparently here referring partly to the so-called "PATRIOT II" Act, which was drafted by the Justice Department but not presented to Congress after being leaked to the media this spring. Nat Hentoff, in the Village Voice, referred to the anonymous staffer who leaked that draft for public comment before it could be railroaded through Congress as a true patriot whose action may have saved this country from being saddled with a government with even more intrusive powers.

"There are two ways to tell the truth : anonymously and posthumously."
-- Thomas Sowell, as quoted by "Trebor" in the prestigious academic journal SuPress (vol. 2, no. 1, p. 5).