Due Process, Geneva Accords: like maybe getting the real culprits?

Why can’t Democrats start making this speech, more or less, and changing the landscape for all these things? Idealism doesn't go far these days, and we need to face up to that. But all is not lost.

There was method to the madness of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin – you know, those people who wrote down a Constitution and made America what it is.

Forget being idealistic. Requiring the government to get search warrants and to follow all the rules of due process is a way to make sure you are actually getting the bad guys. When you can just grab a citizen and throw him in prison without letting him show he is not a terrorist, when you can force confessions or information that are just given to stop the torture, it’s letting the real terrorists go free.

If you search the whole haystack for 10 needles, you will be lucky to get even one and the rest go free. If you get information that first tells you about where it is, and then search just part of the haystack, you might get them all. That’s why warrants for searches are practical, too. It helps us focus on those who are real bad guys.

How stupid is it to treat our Constitutional protections as just interference with law enforcement or our battle with terrorism? It’s our freedom, of course, what makes the United States of America special and leader of the world. But it’s also simple realism, too. People who talk tough about war and torture -- like George Bush almost begging us to look at him as "a wartime President" -- care more about being perceived as tough guys than actually getting the bad guys.

People who ridicule the Constitution, the very source of our leadership, are also weakening us in the world. Nobody wants to follow a hypocrite, and that’s the way George Bush and Richard Cheney have made the world look at us now.

And [this Republican candidate] wants us to follow in the Bush tradition? How is it going to help us get the real terrorists by following a ready-shoot-aim policy on searches and torture?