"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Friday, December 14, 2007

You remember those guys who were going to blow up the Sears Tower? The jury didn’t think much about one of our biggest triumphs in the War on Terror:

One of seven indigent men charged with plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago as part of an Islamic jihad was acquitted on Thursday, and a mistrial was declared in the prosecution of the six others after the jury said it was hopelessly deadlocked.

The outcome was a significant defeat for the Bush administration, which had described the case as a major crackdown on homegrown terrorists.

Officials had acknowledged that the defendants, known as the Liberty City Seven for the depressed section of Miami where they frequently gathered in a rundown warehouse, had never acquired weapons or equipment and had posed no immediate threat. But, the officials said, the case underscored a need for pre-emptive terrorism prosecutions.

OK, maybe those six guys will be convicted on round two. But this shows, once again, this Administration’s propensity to try to terrify us. They told us we were in danger of imminent attack and a jury with a Jewish foreman didn’t quite buy it. What’s really interesting is something I didn’t know:

The seven came under government surveillance in the fall of 2005 when a Yemeni man contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation to report what he described as suspicious activity by them and their request that he help them contact Al Qaeda.

You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of those dumbass white kids who go into the inner city, find the first black guy they see and ask him where they can get some drugs. It sounds like these idiots wanted to contact Al Quaeda, found the first Arab they could and asked him for help, since all Arabs must know where to find terrorists, right?

Notice also that this “cell” wasn’t found by torturing anyone, throwing anyone in prison without habeas or tapping all the phones in Miami. This danger was identified by an alert resident of this country. We’re seeing this over and over again. The shoe bomber is foiled by an alert passenger, the Fort Dix attackers are found by a store clerk, etc.

The American people are our best line of defense and always have been.

Update by Lee: No, you just don’t get it.  This is evidence of the terrorist criminal masterminds at work.  See, these guys are stupid, which PROVES that there are super-intelligent terrorist cells out there, armed with nuclear weapons, against whom all known forms of interrogation are useless.  And if we don’t get to work dismantling Constitutional protections, these ultra-secret rogue terrorist Godzillas are going to destroy Amurka!  How can you be so blind?