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Someone smarter than I am once said “Those who trade their liberties for their security deserve neither.” No one wants another 9/11, but at the same time they would like a basic right to do what you want. Last time I checked, the technology had progressed far enough that no one needs to “intrude” to find out what one is doing IN PUBLIC. I can definitely agree if one is doing something out of the ordinary in a given environment (taking notes near a Nuclear power plant v/s taking notes on a train). As Lewis Black (??) once quipped — “What do you consider suspicious/strange in NYC? I have seen people talking to sandwiches on a train!”

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0751,thompson,78685,2.html

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Secret prisons, torture, indefinite detention and weakened habeas corpus are unconstitutional in my view. Americans will never support a Kafkaesque society. With said, we need a coherent policy on illegal immigration. This man appears to be undocumented, and if we had a coherent national policy regarding undocumented his rights would be better protected — as would ours.

Let me give you another example of the GREAT MAGNANIMITY of this country.

Robert Hansen, the most damaging spy of our generation, had nearly a two decade plus spying career for the Soviet Union at the height of Cold War. He was convicted and sent to jail for life.

Do you know what happened to his wife?

His wife receives the FBI pension Robert Hansen would have been eligible for his years of (dis)service in the FBI. The USA determined she was innocent, and thought Hansen spent his time damaging country it chose not to punish her.

This is type of generosity is emblematic of this country.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0751,thompson,78685,2.html

A quote below:

“Although he was never accused of committing a crime, Narinder Singh spent years locked up in an immigration detention cell, courtesy of the federal government. He was beaten by a fellow inmate, spent time in the hole, and lived in a pod with 40 other men, deprived of sunlight,..”

The unique thing about the US, which should NEVER diminish, is the respect for individuals’ rights. Whenever you concede an inch on that point, you lose a mile. Not perfect, perhaps, but the best there is on this planet.

The USA is unique among all other countries that NO official takes an oath to protect the people or the land: the oath is to preserve and protect the Constitution. May that always be the case!

That said, while an economic argument to keep Bangladeshi Muslims out might be more defensible (although it still has the massive arbitrariness of being born on the right side of a random line on the ground, and we can argue about the (un)fairness of that demarcation), and I don’t know what “progressives” you are talking about, I do not think the answer to the poisonous notion of countries based on a Muslim identity is to create a “secular” country defined by its Hindu identity where all Muslims are treated as guilty of being a fifth column unless they prove otherwise. I will keep from discussing this specific issue more on this thread though, as that would derail it, and I’m sure we will have tons of other opportunities.

Don’t be too surprised by these crazy accusations. For a certain cohort on this blog, its preferable to make random accusations and bring up irrelevant charges than actually debate.

Rahul: There you go again. India does not have a right to detain or torture Bangladeshi illegals and I have never suggested that they do. But the GOI has an obligation to prevent their entry into India and the right to repatriate them without any punitive detention. India does not have the resources to support these people and should be rightfully concerned about demographic shift given the continued support for the Two Nation theory by “progressives” (in quotes because last time I checked religion as a basis for nationhood is illiberal, at least if you are a Hindu or Christian)

Pondering such issues kept you up late ?

Maybe the trail of (how dare he have a name that is a homonym of a known criminal!) bread crumbs must lead to a windowless and keyless cell before we are allowed to acknowledge the risk of a witch hunt.

Perhaps you can infiltrate the FBI or CIA and peek into their secret files to find all those windowless/keyless/doorless/curtainless cells. They have pretty liberal hiring policies… Maybe even offer to do a Martha Stewart makeover on those danged grim sounding cells.

Vikram, honest and understandable mistake. After all, which reasonable person would deem a mere captain’s incarceration and sham trial as worthy of protest? A colonel, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.

There are many people who claim to be dispassionate in their quest for justice. But most often than not they have pet concerns that focus their outrage in pretty predictable directions… I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing because I think a healthy society requires some conflict between competing interests… Taliban groupies like Padilla/Guantanamo Britons are pretty poor choices. While it is true that these people may not be guilty of anything besides having disgusting opinions and keeping bad company, at the end of the day we the unwashed masses will know that they were instrumental in bringing about their own misfortune. I am far more moved by the fact that many of the Guantanamo Afghans were not taken on the battle field and may just be innocent peasants turned in for reward money.

I guess one must be grateful that the tired old boring opinions of obsessive justice pansies are not deemed disgusting by the arbiters of the acceptable level of arbitrariness in our society. Of course, one wonders why Afghans who, like those illegal Bangladeshi Muslims, are guilty of belonging to the wrong religion and living on the wrong side of a border, should not be summarily judged as capable of the most heinous acts and preemptively dealt the retribution that they would have received in the event that they had committed the crimes that we thought that they intended to commit.

Some people will play Chicken Little over Padilla and Lodi

It is indeed the people who worry about erosions of basic rights in an “Al Qaeda is falling, Al Qaeda is falling” frenzy who are the Chicken Littles. Maybe the trail of (how dare he have a name that is a homonym of a known criminal!) bread crumbs must lead to a windowless and keyless cell before we are allowed to acknowledge the risk of a witch hunt.

What’s the big deal??

“So the cops ask a few questions, and you can forcefully demolish any accusations. You do this diplomatically and vigorously such that the next time they think twice about approaching someone in a similar position…

After 9/11 cops have stopped me in the NY/NJ area. Big deal. I stood my ground and defended myself. This is what makes America great — if you perceive an injustice you have ample means to take corrective action. I continue to believe the law enforcement and justice in this country is almost universally on the side of innocents.”

Unfortunately, this doesn’t quite work where I live, which is the jurisdiction of one of the most corrupt precincts in NYC. I personally know people who have been accosted by groups of police for no reason, and friends of mine have had cocaine planted on them just so they could be arrested and help fill the quotas we have here.