Dahlia Lithwick has put together what she considers the 10 most outrageous Civil Liberties violations of 2006.

I’m not going to bother detailing them here. You really have to go read them yourselves, and then carefully ponder three facts:

1) This is the 2006 list. To my knowledge no one has compiled the 2005, 2004, 2003, etc lists, which is unfortunate in a way, since we would then have a graphical presentation of what we already suspect: an ever growing, cascading record of complete contempt for the democratic principles of freedom and respect for law that the framers built into our Constitution.

2) Observation has shown us that Mr Bu$h and his fellow despoilers always attack ferociously against objections to their depredations in an almost feral reaction.

3) After all these years of escalating destruction of American Democracy do you really think these people are going to quietly get up and walk away after the people reject any Republican Presidential candidate in 2008?

Two quotes from Thomas Jefferson:

Writing to Dr Benjamin Rush in September 1800

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Writing to Henry Lee in 1824, two years before his death.

Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: (1) Those who fear and distrust the people and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. (2) Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist; and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.