On Tuesday, October 16, 2001, at 04:04 PM, Greg Broiles wrote:

At 05:45 PM 10/16/2001 -0500, measl@mfn.org wrote:

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On Tue, 16 Oct 2001 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:

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According to Pravda, the US is now under martial law

http://english.pravda.ru/main/2001/10/08/17359.html

For all intents and purposes, we are.

Well, no. "Martial law" usually implies that civil authorities have been replaced or overriden by military command, and that civilian law is not in effect, having been replaced by orders from a military command structure; and it's usually imposed on formerly hostile territory, or territories considered very close to conflict spatially or temporally.

That has not happened in the US, except arguably at the ground zero site, and even there it sounds like it's civilian police officers and elected officials, not military officers, who are setting policy.

Unconstitutional, in many cases? I think so. Martial law? No, that's not accurate. That term has historically meant a lot more that some National Guard troops in the airports.

Agreed, not martial law. However, America operates on the ratchet principle: the tightening of liberties _always_ proceeds in the forward direction. Each new crisis, each new emergency order, each new federal agency, each new law...everything cranks the ratchet wheel toward less liberty. And even our supposed "voices of reason," like "Reason," cough, cough, are publishing crap about how untappable conversation is "scary." The "Wall Street Journal" has Dorothy Rabinowitz and that pansy Indian guy calling for "national ID cards." The issue of whether these measures will make us "safe" is neither interesting nor germane. The Constitution used to be clear on issues like habeas corpus, fourth amendment protections, and the inability of the government to tell us how we can communicate. No longer. As Pravda said, the U.S. is (effectively) under martial law. It's just that our colonels and generals are politicians in D.C. Notice how "states rights" has vanished as an issue? Someone finds white talcum powder and the FBI and FEMA are called in. Everything is being federalized. And former libertarians, in name, are now leading the charge toward statism. I say we kill them all. --Tim May, Occupied America "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.

Yeah, here's what I sent to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/p-02661.html It seems that the TLJ article played up the AP link far too much, which is why I tried to set it straight. I know the TLJ editor, a DC lawyer, and I'm a little surprised he'd do that. -Declan On Tue, Oct 16, 2001 at 08:06:59PM -0700, John Young wrote:

Ratchet indeed. Declan posted elsewhere a blurb from a law journal which links the recent wahoo of a federal prosecutor in the Western District of Washington to Carl Johnson and "Assassination Politics." The article cited three sources on the DoJ web site, two of which do indeed allege CJ's implementation of AP, if not directly then by god by wahooing, as does the law journal. WWA is a hothouse for homeland wahoo.

Jessica Stern, a Harvard wahoo expert, who has extensively interviewed Jim Bell but was never called as a witness in his recent trial, is now disclosing to inquiring journalists the contents of her interviews with homeland wahoos. Expect Jim, AP, CJ and a few others to get ratcheted right smartly to meet fervent demand for wahoo incrimination.

If you haven't euthanized everything you've got on wahoo, think about it.

At 04:34 PM 10/16/2001 -0700, Tim May wrote:

As Pravda said, the U.S. is (effectively) under martial law. It's just that our colonels and generals are politicians in D.C. Notice how "states rights" has vanished as an issue? Someone finds white talcum powder and the FBI and FEMA are called in. Everything is being federalized.

If Pravda had written "police state", I wouldn't disagree. Perhaps something was lost in the translation. I'm surprised that Guiliani's early proposal that elections be postponed and that he remain in charge of NYC for some indeterminate period of time hasn't aroused more anger - or his abandoned suggestion that the term limit rules he backed be modified or eliminated to allow him to stay in power - or his use of the fear of terrorism to enact (by fiat, apparently) other rules he thinks generally beneficial, e.g., special benefits for carpoolers and special restrictions on single-occupant private motor vehicles. That doesn't have shit to do with security, but lots to do with taking advantage of the chaos and flux to implement his own vision of society unhindered by anything as old-school as voting or written laws. And Ashcroft's no different - proposing that we point a new warrantless Internet-sized information hose at the FBI when they seem to have trouble bothering to test evidence they're handed more or less on a silver platter where it should be clear that lives are at stake. It's when the shit hits the fan that you find out what people are really made of and what they really think, instead of the marketing crap made available during nicer times. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@well.com "We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids

In article <5B4EB71E-C28E-11D5-B48C-0050E439C473@got.net>, Tim May <tcmay@got.net> wrote:

However, America operates on the ratchet principle: the tightening of liberties _always_ proceeds in the forward direction. Each new crisis, each new emergency order, each new federal agency, each new law...everything cranks the ratchet wheel toward less liberty.

I agree this is the general direction, but I think there are some major exceptions; for example, the doctrine of prior restraint was not established in court until 1931. -- Shields.