Raiding the Icebox

From last Friday's Washington Post: During the Hoover Administration, the U.S. developed a contingency plan to invade Canada.  ( Raiding the Icebox! )

Apparently, however, the Canadians were way ahead of us: ( Canadian Counter-Attack! )

Or, as the Toronto Globe and Mail put it on Saturday: "They'd Take Halifax--And Then We'd Kill Kenny!"

Remember That Whole "Rule of Law" Thing We Used To Have?

"The lessons of McCarthyism and the Church Committee reports are that people in power will use false evidence to target perceived enemies. History demonstrates that the executive branch makes mistakes. Juries rejected Department of Justice prosecutions against Florida professor Sami Al-Arian and web programmer Sami Omar Al-Hussayen. The conservative 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has expressed concern that the Justice Department told judges one story to keep Jose Padilla detained as an enemy combatant but presented a different story to obtain an indictment against him. The FBI pursued an Oregon lawyer for the Madrid bombings long after Spanish authorities told them that they had the wrong man. And it was only because a judge was paying attention that we learned the Justice Department has brought unsubstantiated terror charges in several cases.

'The Bush administration isn't the first to make these kinds of mistakes and it won't be the last. But it is alone in its insistence that its judgment and discretion, despite these errors, should not be reviewed by judges -- or questioned by the public."

-Jennifer Granick, Executive Director, Stanford University Center for Internet and Society

(You can read the full article here.)