Exchange between Keith Olbermann and law professor Jonathon Turley (via Daily Kos):
Olbermann: … It is easy to imagine Americans who are patriotic but scared, who could just sort of dismiss habeas corpus and other civil liberties as luxuries that make us weak right now. Explain why that’s exactly backwards, why they’re not luxuries, why they’re necessities that make us strong.
Turley: First of all, habeas corpus is sometimes treated like some trick by a Philadelphia lawyer. It is actually the foundation for all other rights. When the government throws you into a dungeon for what you say or who you pray to, it’s habeas corpus that’s the right that allows you to see the enforcement of the other rights. So without habeas corpus, the rest of it is just aspirational and meaningless.
The danger when you walk away from these values, these rights that define us have been proven by this president. The greatest irony of the Bush Administration is that his legacy will be to show the dangers of walking away from those rights that define us. We’re very much alone today. He can’t go to Canada without people protesting, Miss America can’t even go to Mexico without being booed. We’re viewed as a rogue nation and it is a dangerous world to live in when you’re alone. In Italy, they’re prosecuting in abstentia our own agents. This doesn’t make us safer…. It’s very interesting that the lesson this president may leave for his successors is that whether you are inclined to walk away from those core rights or not, that is what puts us in the greatest danger.
But, I suppose, the real answer is that all those foreigners are nothing but stupid, terrorist-loving America-haters. Like the liberals Mr. Limbaugh talks so much about.