Most historians regard the Alien and Sedition Acts as among the most shameful travesties ever passed by Congress. This isn't the first time in American history that Congress was willing to ignore those inconvenient (yet inalienable) rights of ours because we were atremble in the wake of A Foreign Menace. The French!!! Which goes to show how irrational these fears can seem in retrospect.  

Anyways, in 1799 Congress decided to hand President John Adams authoritarian powers that were clearly contrary to the Constitution.  He hadn't even asked for them.

Imagine the chutzpah of doing that at a time that the framers of the Constitution were still kicking. Of course, we hadn't yet developed the near-religious reverence towards "the framers" that those current underminers of all they stood for now affirm.  But it'd be pretty embarrassing to vote "Yea" on abridging the 1st amendment... and then run into James Madison at a cocktail party.

The FISA law is in the spirit of the original Alien Acts, so let's go all out and also draft a New Sedition Act: an Abridgement of Free Speech for the 21st Century.  It might actually do us some good.  

You can follow my twisted logic after the fold... (don't worry: I won't bite)

That line is immediately followed by

Are any of your friends illegal? Relatives?

   They are the beginning of a fantastic column in this morning's New York Times entitled Spies Like You and Me.  Extracting cannot hope to do it justice.   I do urge you to read the entire piece.  But excerpt it I will.  And even though I am not in Bob Herbert's league as a writer, I will also, per my custom, offer a few comments of my own.

So you are welcome to keep reading, and then to add your thoughts on the thread.  Or you can simply use the link above and go read Herbert.  If you do even that, this diary will have served its primary purpose.

And now for more.

This diary falls into the category of "Things I Found Out While Looking For Something Else Entirely." While researching an upcoming book about legalized gambling, I ran across Thomas Jefferson's "Thoughts on Lotteries". Those thoughts included Jefferson's reflections on a dark period of American history that bears a strong resemblance to the present. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

During the John Adams (Federalist) administration, Congress approved and President Adams signed into law the Alien & Sedition Act.  Among other things, the Act basically made it illegal to criticize the government.  People who dared to do so were thrown in jail, a transgression against our cherished value of free speech and the right to hold government and elected leaders accountable.  As a result, the already embattled Federalist coalition was fractured, setting the stage for Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans to come to power.  Our latter day "Bush" Republicans, having nothing to do with "Jeffersonian" Republicans (in fact, a different party entirely) have a Federalist-like coalition stranglehold on our government and are eroding civil liberties in the name of centralized power in a similar way.  My question is, what do you think will be Bush's "Alien & Sedition" blunder, and is it possible that it could be right-to-choice being made illegal?