civil liberties wars: roll call of the wounded

Even though my last post described my often allergic reaction to any math-based problems, I think it's time we took a little survey of just what the administration and republican-led congress have been up to on the civil liberties front recently. In the end, is there anything more important than civil liberties? If you think security is more important then just what exactly is that security defending?

• Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment TO THE CONSTITUTION: these right wing yahoos want to amend the foundational document for our ideally all-inclusive democracy and our country, as well as detract from states' rights, in order to deny people who might be of the same gender and love one another the same basic rights their hetero neighbors all enjoy by default? Can you say "how to create a divisive and controversial distraction away from dismal poll numbers and legislative failure?" While we're at it, why don't we also prevent all convicted, atheist, mentally-challenged and left-handed freaks from getting married! Let's also throw into that list anyone who works in Hollywood or that believes in evolution or that speaks french or that isn't christian...'nuf said?
• Spying and Privacy: let's see, our all-seeing government can now "listen in" on lawyer-client conversations, phone and e-mail messages from any citizen, and they can find out what books we have been reading and what stores we have shopped at. Hell, they can even track the movements of our cars and our persons via cell phone "pinging" archives.
• Dissent and Right to Address Grievances to Government: protest groups are now routinely spied on and infiltrated by various local, state and federal government entities. In addition, protest permits are more and more limited and protest sites are out-of-the-way and often inside fucking cages!
• Due Process/Right to a trial by jury: any citizen can now be designated an "enemy combatant" or "terrorist" based on the opinion just the president with no judicial oversight and denied the right of a speedy trial or even legal representation and detained indefinitely. Anyone can basically be "disappeared" on the president's say so. And then they can be flown out of the country to some nation that permits torture...
• Right to die with dignity: just look at the fiasco of the poor brain-dead Terri Shaivo in florida and the government's struggle to overturn Oregon's Right to Die Act and you can see how the government is trying to trample on this basic human right.

I wonder who's winning this essential war at the moment?...certainly not those on the side of stronger civil liberties. To sacrifice ANY basic liberty or human right for the sake of a never achievable guarantee of safety and security is to live only with fear; in other words, to not live at all.