Land of Shadows

Is the BananaRepublic on its way out? I don't mean just the elected officials like Bush and Cheney in their lame-duck days. I mean their modus operandi or, if you like, their institutional style and substance.

Not to stretch the point, but "there is no crueller tyranny than the one exercised in the shadow of the law, and with the colours of justice." That's Montesquieu, via Clive James, speaking about the Roman emperor Tiberius. "Montesquieu was impressed by the efficiency Tiberius brought to the business of perverting the judicial system," James writes.

Jess Bravin, reporting in The Wall Street Journal, gives me hope our boys are less efficient. He writes that the "effort to create a separate legal system for the war on terrorism may be foundering."

The latest sign, Bravin notes, was Monday's federal appeals court ruling that it's illegal to hold a U.S. resident arrested in this country in indefinite military detention without charging him with a crime simply because the president has declared him an enemy combatant. He writes:

Skeptical civilian and military courts, using language both sweeping and technical, have blocked the government's contention that to fight terrorism the president can invoke military powers that supersede traditional legal protections. None of these setbacks has resulted in the immediate release of prisoners, but they raise questions about the long-term viability of the legal regime.

Bravin is not alone in his analysis. Others -- law professor Jonathan Turley on "Countdown," for one -- have commented pretty much likewise, which is heartening. And yet ... it staggers the mind to realize what we've come to.

BananaRepublic