Today Despotism Became the Law of Our Land

Today George W. Bush became the first American president to give himself--with the rubber stamp of Congress--the absolute power to declare any American citizen whom he believes to be hostile to the United States an "unlawful enemy combatant" and to be shipped to Guantanamo prison camps or domestic detention centers (currently being built) without the right to a fair trial. Today George Bush signed the Military Commissions Act; and today for the first time in my life, I did something I have never before even contemplated: I became a card-carrying member of the ACLU. I did so because the federal government is coming to take some people's civil liberties, to wrench their God-given, inalienable rights from them. Today someone else will disappear. Tomorrow we could be among the "disappeared." May God have mercy on us for seating a despot with the passage and signing of the Military Commissions Act.