QotD: The Bush Legacy

We have a government in power now that feels it can spy on us without a warrant, that it can apprehend and detain anyone it wants for any reason at all — also without a warrant — torture them, all while holding them indefinitely without access to a lawyer. This is a government that couldn't even bring itself to give a definitive "no" when asked if it felt it had the power to assassinate American citizens. Not only that, but many in this government and many of its allies believe they should have the power to arrest and imprison any journalist who dares to write about all of the above. This is also the most secretive administration we've ever seen, as well as one that routinely abuses the classification process, classifying politically damaging information while declassifying formerly "sensitive" information when it deems that doing so might score political points.

These things ought to scare the crap out of you. Frankly, if I had to come up with a definition of "tyranny," it'd be hard to do better than the paragraph above.

Radley Balko, "What Matters", TheAgitator.com, 2006-10-09