This weekend I wrote that Americans are undeserving of their "freedoms" due to the apparent approval of various actions taken without much opposition. Apparently Paul Craig Roberts is of a similar mind:
It turns one’s stomach to listen to conservatives bemoan the destruction of liberty by compassion while they institutionalize torture, indefinite detention in violation of habeas corpus, murder of citizens on suspicion and unproven accusation alone, complete and total violation of privacy, interference with the right to travel by unaccountable “no-fly” lists and highway check points, the brutalization of citizens and those exercising their right to protest by police, frame-ups of critics, and narrow the bounds of free speech.
And understand that even though so-called "liberals" have issues with this, they, particularly the black ones, have remained quite silent on these issues particularly as it regards the Federal government for no other reason than the ancestry of the holder of the office of president.
Mr. Roberts also speaks upon the issue of Bradley Manning:
And now the judge, Col. Denise Lind, who comes across as a member of the prosecution rather than an impartial judge, has ruled that Manning cannot use as evidence the government’s own reports that the leaked information did not harm national security. Lind has also thrown out the legal principle of mens rea by ruling that Manning’s motive for leaking information about US war crimes cannot be presented as evidence in his trial.
Mens rea says that a crime requires criminal intent. By discarding this legal principle, Lind has prevented Manning from showing that his motive was to do his duty under the military code and reveal evidence of war crimes. This allows prosecutors to turn a dutiful act into the crime of aiding the enemy by revealing classified information.
Couple the ability of removing "intent" from a crime, with the idea that certain speech and thought is "criminal" and you have a recipe for certain judicial disaster.
