The Law R.I.P.

What better symbolism of the historical epoch unfolding around us than the rebellion of the Pakistani suits? And just as the lawyers’ revolt against Musharraf gathers steam, the shameless U.S. Senate led by its Democrat copperheads confirms as the nation’s guardian of laws another sniveling shill for the Bush regime’s Star Chamber, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, a man who can’t quite decide if American government agents should be authorized to shackle prisoners and suffocate them. Playing out on the world stage is indeed a titanic moral clash, but it’s not between terrorists and nice people. It’s between those who believe in the rule of law and those who don’t.

Under the Bushite world view, even defending the accused in court becomes an enemy act, so it’s no accident that Musharraf echoed these sentiments in his martial law declaration justifying the takeover of the courts. Dictatorships always consider resistance in any form subversive, even when it uses the rules under which they themselves pretend to operate. In fact, there are no rules, only the top guy’s will. It’s amazing to witness the reinstallation of this pre-Enlightenment attitude amidst our polity and to see so little alarm expressed over it.

But it’s too easy to blame Bush for the the slow strangulation of our civil protections. The wretched Charles Schumer (a Democrat) weaseled through his vote for Mukasey by noting that he was ‘dead wrong on torture,’ surely a phrase that will live through the ages. Now we debate torture, as if it had pros and cons like the Oxley-Sarbanes Act!

The ultimate mark of America’s ignominy is that when dangerous authoritarians like Schumer sell our birthright for a mess of Beltway pottage, there’s barely a whimper of protest. The betrayed liberals cast their annoyed gaze no further than January’s Iowa caucuses and convince themselves that Schumer’s ever-ready accomplice Madame Hillary soon will ride to the rescue.

It gets better: The same day (Nov 8) former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, Rudolph Giuliani’s one-time favorite for the top police job in the country, was indicted on a raft of corruption charges, including taking bribes from Tony Soprano’s construction buddies. The fact that this could occur without completely annihilating Giuliani’s career speaks volumes. Americans are telegraphing a powerful message to their ruling elite—we don’t care about freedom, safeguards, fairness or procedures. We don’t care if the next-door neighbor is spirited away in the dark of night, dropped into a dungeon, handed his nuts on a platter or never heard from again. Just KEEP US SAFE.

November 8, 2007: a proud day to be a Pakistani.