"In times of war, the law falls silent"
by digby
That's right. And Justice Scalia says that's perfectly normal:
"Well of course Korematsu was wrong. And I think we have repudiated in a later case. But you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again," Scalia told students and faculty during a lunchtime Q-and-A session.
Scalia cited a Latin expression meaning, "In times of war, the laws fall silent."
"That's what was going on — the panic about the war and the invasion of the Pacific and whatnot. That's what happens. It was wrong, but I would not be surprised to see it happen again, in time of war. It's no justification, but it is the reality," he said.
And that means that when you are engaged in an endless Global War on Oceania ... er ... Terror, pretty much anything goes, right? Funny how that works.
We have been "fighting" a war of some kind every day since December 7, 1941. Our entire government is organized around that fact. We have seen the government exposed and excused for repeatedly violating constitutional principles in order to "keep us safe" from the Axis powers communist menace and now the terrorist menace for over 70 years. WWII had an explicit end, the Cold War simply petered out after 40 years or so. The War on Terror, being as it isn't a fight against nations or even an ideology but rather a fight against a specific tactic will go on forever if they want it to. This is the basic challenge as long as the United States' self-designated role is to be the global hegemon.
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