Deserving neither liberty nor safety

Quoting the dictum of Ben Franklin, “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety,” Keith Olbermann once again seems to find the right, evocative language in his piece today, 'Beginning of the end of America'.

In the aftermath of the signing of the Military Commissions Act, Keith writes that we now have:

A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

He recites the litany of Presidential abuses of power from John Adams and the Alien & Sedition Act to Roosevelt's interning of Japanese Americans. He then cites El Presidente's comment at the signing the other day and points out their unintended significance:

“With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?”
Wise words.
And ironic ones, Mr. Bush.
Your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act.
You spoke so much more than you know, Sir.
Sadly—of course—the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously was you.

And as if the contents of the Act were not bad enough-- and they are-- Keith addresses the character of the political "process" by which they were obtained and will presumably be carried out:

This President now has his blank check.
He lied to get it.
He lied as he received it.
Is there any reason to even hope he has not lied about how he intends to use it nor who he intends to use it against?

“These military commissions will provide a fair trial,” you told us yesterday, Mr. Bush, “in which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney and can hear all the evidence against them.”
"Presumed innocent," Mr. Bush?
The very piece of paper you signed as you said that, allows for the detainees to be abused up to the point just before they sustain “serious mental and physical trauma” in the hope of getting them to incriminate themselves, and may no longer even invoke The Geneva Conventions in their own defense.
"Access to an attorney," Mr. Bush?
Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift said on this program, Sir, and to the Supreme Court, that he was only granted access to his detainee defendant on the promise that the detainee would plead guilty.
"Hearing all the evidence," Mr. Bush?
The Military Commissions Act specifically permits the introduction of classified evidence not made available to the defense.

Your words are lies, Sir.
They are lies that imperil us all.
“One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks,” you told us yesterday, “said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America.” That terrorist, sir, could only hope.
Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.

Read it all, and weep. "Cry, the beloved country."