Richard Smith wrote, “[C. Wright] Mills had it right, 60 years ago, with The Power Elite and The Causes of World War Three. The masses have no influence, as the recent elections prove. The power elite, who control the Congress, want and have continual war.”

Dr. P. Wilkinson wrote, “The only things the US is still missing are Britain’s draconian Official Secrets Act, a reversal of the burden of proof at libel and a constitution of the Star Chamber. The Holy Office was long active in Brazil and much of Latin America. The US had to rely on lynching and witch hunts. Modernisation would mean giving the President all those organs officially to perform the tasks his handlers are doing clandestinely. The Democrats are certainly as willing to accept ‘Crown’ repression as the Republicans. Separation of powers – supposedly a hallmark of US constitutionalism – has given way entirely to something like the ‘President in Congress’ – with Cheney doing a bad imitation of Walsingham and George Bush as a more powerful if even more second-rate Richard III. What is that old saying about history repeating itself as…

I find it frightfully amusing every time there is some dreadful legislation passed in the silly season and just before recess. It is as if after two hundred years no one in opposition ever noticed this tactic for pushing through legislation. Everyone is always so ‘surprised.’ Of course it offers every one an excuse for doing nothing if the passage of infamous legislation somehow is engineered by whips who know when the legislature is going to be least attentive. Maybe one should just forbid legislatures to recess at all. Let them legislate unto exhaustion, whereupon their out-legislated corpses can then be properly removed as befits persons of their dignities.”

Peter Lushing challenged my assertion that holding detainees because they were too dangerous to release, but not dangerous enough to be charged was “bizarre”: “Your Counterpunch assertion that it is bizarre to deem somebody dangerous enough to detain at Guantánamo even if they are not charged with crime – I respectfully disagree. People caught in situations of preparation or alignment with terror fighters vs the US might not have committed a provable war crime of the type that is within Gitmo jurisdiction. I think the larger point is that dissymetries between criminal justice due process and defending against terrorists raise difficult and important questions, not answerable by labels such as “bizarre.” I’ve been following these issues carefully and generally find that the Left is prone to sloppy thinking easily as much as the Right. Maybe that is why the bills re eavesdropping passed last week?”

In brief response, I have to insist that I do find it bizarre – and, in fact, criminally irresponsible – to detain people because they are too dangerous to be released, but not dangerous enough to be charged. If this happened in any other context than the amplified paranoia surrounding the “War on Terror,” it would be called internment, and would recall, for example, the gross injustice perpetrated against Japanese Americans in World War II.

The most pithy response was from Janet Contursi, who wrote, “And let’s not hold our breaths – we all know that in September the invertebrate Democrats will cave and cave again. As a cynic, I’m guessing that the Democrats don’t really want to curb Bush’s imperial presidency – they want to inherit it.”