Civil Liberties

Commenting on how the Bush regime has assaulted civil liberties by holding people without charges, suborning torture, spying on Americans without a warrant, and issuing "signing statements" that baldly state the President's plan not to uphold the law, the New York Times exhorts Democrats not to be

swayed by the absurd notion circulating in Washington that the Democrats should now "look ahead" rather than use their new majority to right the dangerous wrongs of the last six years of Mr. Bush’s one-party rule.

This is a false choice. Dealing with [how the Bush regime has eroded civil liberties] is not about the past. The administration's assault on some of the nation's founding principles continues unabated. If the Democrats were to shirk their responsibility to stop it, that would make them no better than the Republicans who formed and enabled these policies in the first place.