An editorial in today’s NY Times presents an accurate view of what’s been happening to our Democracy:

We’ll find out in November how well the White House’s be-very-afraid campaign has been working with voters. We already know how it’s working in Congress. Stampeded by the fear of looking weak on terrorism, lawmakers are rushing to pass a bill demanded by the president that would have minimal impact on antiterrorist operations but could cause profound damage to justice and the American way.

Yesterday, the president himself went to Capitol Hill to lobby for his bill, which would give Congressional approval to the same sort of ad hoc military commissions that Mr. Bush created on his own authority after 9/11 and that the Supreme Court has already ruled unconstitutional. It would permit the use of coerced evidence, secret hearings and other horrific violations of American justice.

Bu$hCo is very worried about the future. Not the future of America, or of the ridiculously named “War on Terror,” but rather they’re worried about their own futures, because they can see the very real possibility of Democratic victories in the November mid-term elections, and likelihood of Dem control of Committee chairmanships bringing multiple investigations, subpoenas, and even – dare we whisper it? – the I word.

For more than six years this administration has pushed a radical, extra-Constitutional, un-American agenda. Throughout the entire period Bu$hCo has always tried to avoid judicial review of its lawbreaking policies. A cynical man might believe they didn’t to be judged in a Federal court because they knew what they were doing is seriously in violation of the Constitution and established American principles of justice, honesty, honor and respect for the rights of others.

Legal experts within the military have been deeply opposed to the president’s plan from the beginning, and have formed one of the most influential bulwarks against the administration’s attempt to rewrite the rules to make its recent behavior retroactively legal. This week, the White House sank so low as to strong-arm the chief prosecutors for the four armed services into writing a letter to the House that seemed to endorse the president’s position on two key issues. Congressional officials say those officers later told lawmakers that they did not want to sign the letter, which contradicts everything the prosecutors, dozens of their colleagues, former top commanders of the military and a series of federal judges have said in public.

The idea that the nation’s chief executive is pressing so hard to undermine basic standards of justice is shocking. And any argument that these extreme methods would be used only against the most dangerous of international terrorists has been destroyed by the handling of hundreds of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, many of whom appear to have been scooped up in Afghanistan years ago with little attempt to verify any connection to terrorism, and now are in danger of lingering behind bars forever without a day in court.

Don’t think for one second that if they get away with this, at some point farther down the tortured road of 21st century America we won’t see ordinary Americans, guilty of no crime other than domestic political dissent, (“contempt of Bu$hCo”) thrown into prisons or concentration camps and subject to Mr Bush’s dreamy paradise of military tribunals, replete with enhanced interrogations, secret evidence, secret executive rulings on who is allowed legal counsel, and inevitably secret lifetime sentences. As is noted in the editorial, “[T]he White House bill also includes anyone who gives “material support” to a terrorist group or anyone affiliated with a terrorist group. Legal experts fear this definition could cover people who, for example, contribute to charities without knowing they support terrorist groups, or that are not identified as terrorist fronts until later. It could be used to arrest a legal resident of the United States and put him before a military commission.”

He also wants Congress to rewrite the War Crimes Act, which makes it a crime to violate the Geneva Conventions. The administration’s goal here is to avoid having C.I.A. interrogators, private contractors or the men who gave them their orders called to account for the immoral way the administration has run its terrorist detention centers.

The short-term political goal is to constantly harp on the failed threat of terrorism in order to game the mid-term elections, and maintain Republican control of Congress. The long-term goal is to ensure that Messers Bu$h and Cheney escape any liability for war crime trials, either in the US or at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

The opposition to these provisions by legal scholars, military lawyers and a host of former top commanders of the armed forces has been overwhelming. In recent days, two former chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff, Colin L. Powell, and John W. Vessey, wrote to Senator John McCain urging him to go on fighting the White House. “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism,” General Powell wrote.

More than two dozen former military leaders and top Pentagon officials, from both parties, wrote to Senator John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, expressing “profound concern” about undermining the Geneva Conventions. Their objections involve a simple equation: The Conventions protect captured American soldiers. If America mistreats its prisoners, American soldiers are in danger of the same, or worse.

John McCain, above all other Senators, should understand this issue because he was himself tortured for years by the North Vietnamese. But John McCain has only one thought in his mind: to be the next President. General Powell, sadly, comes to this issue six years too late. His obsequious bowing and scraping to the House of Bush now hangs around his neck like a Tanzanian automobile tire.