should we be able to detain [rapists] indefinitely lest they rape again?

actually, we already do,in massachusetts, and i would assume other states.

once a person has been convicted of a particular sex crime, finished serving their sentence, they can be adjudicated as a sexually-dangerous person and held for the rest of their life at a treatment center. once a year persons being held can request a review of their status. it works pretty well. i have typed a lot of these prepared transcripts of several dozens of these kinds of legal proceedings.

as far as people like roeder, i say what is good for the goose is good for the gander. if we're going to be rounding up terrorists and putting them away without trial, i say it would be dangerous to discriminate between white/brown, christian/moslem -- they are all terrorists.

C'mon, Hilz, stop kidding around. The people you're talking about are white!

A terrorist by any other name would be just as deadly. (With apologies to Will S.)

Yes, by all means, send the fucker to a detention center. The damage done by a violent religious fundamentalist of the Christianist stripe is on par with his Muslimist brethren. Perhaps, if God has a sense of humor (or a sense of justice?), they will share a cell and cancel each other out.

Honestly, Hilzoy, the irony of Christian/Muslim juxtaposition is lost on any but the progressive faithful. No one right of center will allow themselves to consider the parallel criminality of domestic terrorism perpetrated by white people.

Why is the left so obsessed by the fact that the killer of the late-term abortionist is a white Christian and so unconcerned about the fact that the killer of the soldier in Little Rock is a black Muslim (who really is a terrorist)?

There willbe demonstrations and law suits filed by the usual left-wing America haters to insure that the black Muslim soldier killer gets all his rights but the same people will demand the head of the abortionist killer.

Go figure.

Lovely !

Actually, f, what I'm concerned about is that the black Muslim is actually charged with terrorism (rightfully so), while the white Christian is not. What our justice system is saying is that if you are white and Christian, you cannot be labeled a terrorist no matter what you do. Let's face it, if a black Muslim is pulled over with a bomb in his car, everyone (liberals included) would rightly consider that person a terrorist. Change the man's skin color and religion, and suddenly the man is granted full due process and then released on a technicality to commit more crimes. Or, if a Catholic church funnels money to the IRA, that's okay (history proves that). But it's a whole lot different if a Muslim mosque sends money to Hezbollah. What we are asking is that the law be applied equally to terrorists regardless of race or religion. Conservatives are asking for special treatment for Christians and white people.

Newsflash, Hilzoy:

Sodomy is not illegal. Since 2003.

I know you're being snarky, but the idea of waterboarding wall street's financial butchers has definite appeal to me. That's the kind of transparency I can get behind. And even if we don't get actionable intelligence, it would be so satisfying.

Hilzoy - great comparison, thanks.

f - Because there's no evidence that the Muslim was anything more than a lone nut, while Roeder was part of organized efforts to stop abortion (although some of them also recognized that he was nuts). Because gun nuts have been buying guns and ammunition at a record pace, fearing Obama. Because there are wreckless media celebrities like O'Reilly who painted Tiller as worse than war criminals, talked about getting his hands on them. And most importantly, because many people have been making flippant comments just like yours, excusing the murder of a doctor because you didn't like that he made different choices than you would (save the mother, kill the unborn child).

No one should be concerned about that Muslim because it's a straightforward case: a crazy person shot some people. Find him, arrest, convict. In contrast, there are millions of Muslims living in the U.S., and they're not murdering military personnel. After six years of a sickening war, that lack of activity means something.

Back to the worrisome side of the comparison, there's millions of people living in the U.S. who agree with you that Tiller did not deserve to live. Therefore, it seems likely that more doctors will be attacked.

Rapists have pretty high recidivism rates;

Well, actually, depending on how you're qualifying this, they don't. A small subgroup does have a high recividism rate.

should we be able to detain them indefinitely lest they rape again? People who are caught engaging in various kinds of financial fraud would seem to offer excellent targets for waterboarding: they are likely to have intelligence about other criminals, and might not be able to hold out for very long. And who could possibly object to waterboarding, say, the senior leadership of Enron? Next time a pedophilia scandal pops up in the Catholic Church, we could put various Cardinals and Bishops in tiny little boxes with their own individual spiders, or pour holy water down their noses. (Seizing the Church's assets would be a special bonus: goodbye deficits!)

Actually the R's mostly support this agenda. The exceptions are for executives/rich people, and people who own guns, and who violate gun laws, who are white and rural. Other than that, they prefer to put everyone in jail, and house them in the worst possible conditions. (See, for instance, that dude in Arizona who has been running the little outdoor prison camp for two decades.)

Newt Gingrinch himself summarized the philosophy as something: everyone knows what real crime is, rape, murder, etc., and most Americans that everybody cheats on their income taxes and when running banks and otherwise engages in financial fraud and whatnot, and those laws are silly and not enforced.

He's essentially saying that the nation's prisons are for blacks, mexicans and poor people, that is, people who can't afford defense attorneys. The entire goal for 30 years has been to increase incarceration, and remove the rights of criminal defendants, with the only limitation being a need to avoid tax increases. Thus do we now have a system that rivals the old Soviet gulag system in size, harshness (that is, slave labor) and purpose. If you listen to conservatives, this means we are hardly doing enough, and need to do way more. I would assume that the next time R's get into power, they will attempt to implement the agenda you describe, since they like it so much, and also so they can punish as many black people as possible. (And Rush Limbaugh is unhappy.)

After all, the black prison system set up by the Bush DoD is frequently staffed by national guard types who have law enforcement day jobs. The essential difference is that in that system, those guys had permission to go hogwild on brown-skinned people who were not allowed to claim any rights. So I'm sure they'd like to bring it home.

Which is why I'm utterly baffled why you and Balkin (who I thought surely knew the score) think this is a clever point, as opposed to being merely descriptive.

max
['What you're doing isn't satire, it's describing the blueprint for the future.']

You're not thinking big enough.

During the days that the terrorist Eric Rudolph was on the run in the woods in SC, it was widely believed that he was getting help from the local population, and I wondered at the time why the hell we didn't treat those people like we do any other group of people that harbor terrorists.

What we need to do now is identify the population centers where terrorists like Roeder are getting support and first bomb the hell out of them, and then send in the national guard to do a house by house search until everyone there is dead.

Why should the Falujahians have all the fun?

With just a little waterboarding, Roeder would probably give up Bush and Cheney as his accomplices; as well as confessing to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby.

Should he be tortured to provide information on other possible domestic terrorists?

Should we make sure he doesn't have knowledge of a 'ticking bomb' some where?

Conservatives would naturally say with a straight face that there is no moral equivalence.

I can't say I'm surprised by the recent survey that showed large portions of American Evangelicals approving the use of torture to extract information. Since torture enthusiasts routinely invoke ticking-bomb scenarios lifted from "24" as their litmus test for need, I'd like to ask these Christianists for their response to the two following scenarios.

1. Muslim extremists announce that they have hidden a dirty nuclear bomb in New York City. They state that unless the federal government carves out territory in Washington state and Oregon for an Islamic state governed by sharia law, the dirty nuke will be detonated. The government has 24 hours to act. Does the federal government have the right and duty to torture any individual, American or foreign, in order to gain information that will prevent the catastrophe?

1. Christian secessionists announce that they have hidden a dirty nuclear bomb in New York City. They state that unless the federal government carves out territory in South Carolina and Georgia for a Christian republic governed by Biblical law, the dirty nuke will be detonated. The government has 24 hours to act. Does the federal government have the right and duty to torture any individual, American or foreign, in order to gain information that will prevent the catastrophe?

What you are all saying is important and all, but how can you all ignore the fact that point (3) is missing? Was it too horrible to print? I'm trying to imagine what it would have been. We want point (3)! Save point (3)! We have to have our priorities, ya know.

I love when convoluted hypotheticals drive our debate. One abortion doctor (the first in many, many years) is tragically murdered and suddenly my mail is being read, my phones tapped, various pro-lifers are jailed at GITMO and habeus corpus has been suspended. We need a few more carts to place in front of this herd of horses we've rounded up.

This post is why I love Washington Monthly.

The one labeled f really misunderstands this discussion, although I am not surprised.

We are not so much looking for the head of Dr. Tiller's murderer, as wanting the justice system to work, including presumption of innocence for Mr. Roeder. I want the same for this jihadist at the recruiting station.

I know conservatives are a bloodthirsty lot, so don't project that bloodlust onto us. I want equal protection under the law for all people.

If we are to avoid discrimination on the basis of religion, and the alleged notion that we are unfairly persecuting these poor, radicalized Christians, then we must, by default, offer them treatment equal to the treatment that they themselves have demanded we apply to their radicalized Muslim brethren. After all, their "revealed text" includes the phrase:

JUDGE NOT, LEST YE BE JUDGED; FOR SO AS YE HAVE JUDGED, THEN SO, TOO, SHALL YE BE JUDGED.

The radicalized Christians have thus judged themselves accordingly; by their own words and deeds shall we know them for what they truly are:

TERRORISTS....

Many in the movement to use violent methods to stop abortion consider themselves to be soldiers in a civil war. Perhaps, Ms Hilzoy, you should peruse the transformation from a housewife in Grants Pass, Oregon to flying to Whicita and shooting Dr Tiller in his arms by Sharon Shannon. She is now, incarcerated in a Federal Prison. She was, originally, sentenced for the attempted murder, but, authorities learned she had kept a detailed diary about her morphing from a housewife into a soldier of God. The diary provided a great of deal of information about her training in the use of bomb techniques, both plastique and acid. She was trained by others. She wrote about her involvement in actually bombing clinics. The acid was used to make them uninhabitable. The Feds brought charges against her and 20 years were added to her original 10 year sentence. This woman began as a protestor and morphed into an attempted murderer. Only being a poor shot kept her from being a murderer.

She has stated that shooting Dr Tiller was the most holy and religious act she had ever done. These are zealots. Political assassination is never "justifiable", nor a heat of passion event. The assassins plan their attacks in detail. Many have a martyr wish and, unfortunately, are considered same by many of the same ilk.

My grandfather delivered 1,000s of babies. But since he was a surgeon (obstetrical) there were times when he was called on to perform "late-term" abortions in order to save the woman.

He didn't choose to do this, circumstances simply presented themselves, and he acted accordingly.

In the eyes of some, my grandfather was a murderer.

If he had been killed for his actions, you wouldn't be reading this post.

How do you decide who "deserves" to be killed for performing legal medical procedures?

I just read the following Kos diary about the biological underpinnings of morality and the differences in moral equations between liberals and conservatives. Basically, it says that within individual moral determinations, conservatives have a relatively higher value for group identity than liberals do, and that causes us to argue at cross purposes. It's the IOKIYAR syndrome, and this is a perfect example of it. It references the work of Jonathan Haidt. I haven't watched the video it links to yet, but I plan to. I was hoping for something a little more substantial at the end, but it sort turns into the Monty Python skit about how to play the flute and cure cancer. Still pretty cool though.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/3/738295/-Morning-Feature:-IOKIYACDifferent-Moral-Equations

I still don't understand how this is an act of terrorism. Terrorism is meant to strike fear into the hearts of all citizens, the idea that "it could be me next time". The fact that this murder may have political aims is not the issue. The target was so specifically chosen there is no reason for any of the parishoners, however horrified they may have been, to think that they would be targeted next. The potentially terrorized here are other abortion providers, and that is terrible, but that is different, to me, than the attack on the masses that I understand terrorism to mean. If another abortion provider is killed, to me, that's serial murder. If we call this murder terrorism, then it opens the doors to call all sorts of things terrorism, and cheapens the meaning of the word -- like if someone decides to kill lawyers who defend child molesters, or the judges who acquit them. Any politically motivated murder would become terrorism. I see the murder of George Tiller as just that. But not terrorism.

By the way, I'm liberal in most things, and not trolling. I genuinely don't understand the claim, so perhaps one of you can make the argument in a way I understand, or refer me to an article/posting which does.

I continue to believe that it is Un-American and Anti-Military both to torture and to provide justifications for torture. Every justification I have heard can be used by other groups and countries as justification for torturing Americans - civilian and military!

However, for this week I will be an Evangelical Christian and agree to torture. With the known efficiency of torture providing whatever answer the torturer wants, Roeder should be tortured to confess that he was directly ordered to murder by Bill O'Reilly.

Then O'Reilly can be tortured to confess that he received his orders from Rush Limbaugh. Then Limbaugh can be tortured to confess that he received his orders from Newt Gingrich. Then Gingrich can be tortured to confess that he received his orders from Mitch McConnell. Pretty soon, all rethugs and anyone the administration does not like can be 'indefinitely imprisoned' to prevent further terrorist acts on their part.

Amerika - the land of the used to be free and the home of cowards!

"The target was so specifically chosen there is no reason for any of the parishoners, however horrified they may have been, to think that they would be targeted next."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
5% of the world population are U.S. citizens. That means 95% of the world has nothing to fear as relates to violent acts specifically targeting and committed against the U.S. I say "violent" instead of "terrorist", using the ContraryLib line of reasoning.........

The killing of Dr Tiller was, also, meant to send a message of terror to any other medical provider, whether a doctor or nursing assistant or office staff. It was meant to send a message of terror to any unfortunate woman who needed the clinic. It was meant to close down all abortion clinics. One doesn't need to reverse Roe v. Wade, or, even tighten the rules as many ill informed states have done; all that is needed is a bullet. When, you, effectively, change the law by the use of a bullet, that is terrorism.

"When, you, effectively, change the law by the use of a bullet, that is terrorism.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Likewise, when you attempt to send a message to an entire group of people by viciously torturing (and sometimes killing while in detention) a select few of their members that is terrorism. When do the arrests and trials for that conduct start?

A trial just started in Atlanta for a Muslim Georgia Tech student charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism. I will be very curious to see if he ever said anything worse than what is posted every day on the web about killing Americans like abortion providers, Nancy Pelosi, union members, etc.

Th, it's only illegal to openly advocate violence against rich, white conservatives. Everyone else (read: of color, gay, liberal, Democrat, non-Christian, et al) suffering violence is just getting what they richly deserve.

Shorter f: "Don't worry about the Fundie Terrorist. Look! There's a brown guy!"

The target was so specifically chosen there is no reason for any of the parishoners, however horrified they may have been, to think that they would be targeted next. The potentially terrorized here are other abortion providers, and that is terrible, but that is different, to me, than the attack on the masses that I understand terrorism to mean.

Just like with the WTC bombing on 9/11. The folks who were targeted were 1) defense workers at the Pentagon; and 2) Wall Street types in the World Trade Center.

There was no reason for "normal" folks who didn't have high-flying jobs in finance or defense to fear attacks, you really couldn't call it "terrorism". Heck, if you didn't live in NYC, it shouldn't even be an issue.

I too am liberal in most things, and not trolling. Perhaps someone could pull my head out of my ass for me.

Thanks!

I find the idea of using extra-legal methods, like torture, on anti-abortion activists and organizations under suspicion of terrorism, is repugnant. The same goes for using extra-legal methods on bankers accused of white collar crimes.

I think we should use the same legal means we use for drug crimes - asset forfeiture. Just seize everything they own that was remotely associated with the crime: cash, vehicles, buildings, other real estate. You don't even need a conviction.

(/sarcasm. I find asset forfeiture repugnant, too.)

Terrorism is meant to strike fear into the hearts of all citizens, the idea that "it could be me next time".

No, that isn't true at all. When Black September murdered the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, I doubt anyone thought they could be next, but the incident drew wordlwide attention to the Palestinian cause and demonstrated the lengths some Palestinian were willing to go for said cause.

The fact that this murder may have political aims is not the issue.

Actually, it is precisely the issue. Again: this murder received international attention and spread a specific political message -- part of which was many in the anti-abortion crowd saying "I don't condone Tiller's murder, but..."

The target was so specifically chosen there is no reason for any of the parishoners, however horrified they may have been, to think that they would be targeted next.

But again, the act is much more insidious than simply thinking they could be next.

The potentially terrorized here are other abortion providers, and that is terrible, but that is different, to me, than the attack on the masses that I understand terrorism to mean.

Then by your definition, the Munich massacre wasn't terrorism, since it wasn't an attack on the masses, and non-Israeli athletes had little reason to fear they would be next, especially with the perpetrators killed or captured.

An attack doesn't have to be on the masses to be terrorism. Presuming you really are asking in good faith, your understanding of what terrorism
actually is is seriously flawed.

Hilzoy, good hit against the hypocrisy of the Right. They are "for doing X if we need to" unless X is applied to their own kind. They are complete, damnable hypocrites and dis-ingenues.

BTW Karen Marie, what you report about detention is at most only *after* a legit conviction is obtained. Much of the complaint about the Bushist-style extralegality concerns treatment in advance of any legit legal rulings on a person.

ContraryLib, it is not true that "Terrorism is meant to strike fear into the hearts of all citizens." Would you want to imply, that a big KKK attack on blacks is not "terrorism" since they are a mere segment of the population? A pogrom, not "terrorism"? What if they were really big operations against those groups, like wiping out a whole town of black people as actually happened (can find easily.)

Terrorism is an act designed to intimidate any sector of society, up to "all" if its' bad enough (like 9/11.) Sure it's a gradient with gray areas to argue about, so is a lot, so what. I'm glad you're a liberal, but you need to sharpen up your assessment skills to get ahead of right-wingers. They typically and are, offering fallacious TPs like yours.

The target was so specifically chosen there is no reason for any of the parishoners, however horrified they may have been, to think that they would be targeted next.

But plenty of reason for anyone who might need an abortion -- i.e. women -- to fear they could be next.

The potentially terrorized here are other abortion providers, and that is terrible, but that is different, to me, than the attack on the masses that I understand terrorism to mean.

Again, the potentially terrorized here also include anyone who might need or want an abortion, which is tens of millions of women in this country and which seems like "masses" to me.

.
Yeah. It really would be interesting to turn the Con's bullsh*t around on them, wouldn't it? Love to see them trying to talk out of both sides of their twisted mouths while they were being waterboarded.

But, as Richard Milhouse Nixon, that great Republican, once carefully enunciated into a microphone he himself had hidden in the White House, "THAT WOULD BE WRONG." And then we'd be just like the terrorists, er, Republicans. The question we should be asking is What would Jesus shoot?
.

It's against the law to drive without a seatbelt. Doing that endangers insurance companies. That's terrorism for certain! We need to beat violators with the buckle end of a seatbelt until they tell all -- they might be able to divulge the identities of other seatbelt terrorist cells.

Bet they could get him to tell us that Operation
Rescue is a terrorist organization hiding WMDs with very little effort.

I do wish the DoJ and pentagon would treat this as they would any other terrorist attack and seize the assets of supporting groups and getting these people off the streets. It's terrorist activities are all over their web site so what is the delay?

At last, #4, someone has come up with a realistic "ticking bomb", scenario. And the Terrorist and the Terrorist's organization are American citizens and left wing conservatives.

Thank you Hilzoy

More to the point, FOX News has systematically encouraged these domestic terrorists. So Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp needs to have its assets seized, its bank accounts frozne, and Murdoch along with the Newscorp execs and the FOX News anchors need to be hauled away to Guantanamo Bay.

They can hold their next Fox and Friends broadcast from inside the steel cage at Gitmo.

Oh, and O'Reilly has a prime instigator of this kind of domestic terrorism. Therefore Bill O'Reilly should be the first subject of President Obama's "preventive detention."

Notice that no one has ever asked the Right or its sundry mouthpieces to explain why the ways in which we treat terrorists, which are justified in the name of "saving lives," should not be applied to other kinds of criminals or in other contexts. I don't think it's a racial thing (i.e., it's OK to torture brown people but not white people), or even a conscious double-standard. But 3,000 Americans died on 9/11 and therefore it's OK to do whatever is necessary to prevent it from happening again. Yet somehow, it would be wrong for our government to do ANYTHING about the 20,000 or so Americans who die every year for lack of health insurance, the 30,000 or so Americans who die every year by gun violence, not even the 30-40,000 Americans who die every year in auto accidents.

"Keeping us safe" means keeping us safe. It does not, as the Right would have us believe, mean preventing one particular group of people from committing one particular type of violence, while ignoring (if not creating) other dangers.

I'm happy to defend contrarylib's opinion. (I am an independent thinker--label yourselves liberal or conservative if you wish and join the groupthink and bashing of "the other side.")

The murder of Tiller, a late term abortion doctor, at his church, is not terrorism. No women are targeted. No abortion clinics are targeted. I suppose if you attend a church frequented by a late term abortion doctor, then you may be scared of an errant shot.

How ridiculous to compare the murder of Tiller to 9/11--an act that brought an entire city to its knees and is bankrupting an entire country.

The murder of Tiller is an assassination. It is not terrorism.

We have all seen numerous militant Christianists expressing very enthusiastic and unapologetic support of Scott Roeder's actions, openly admitting that they feel that this type of killing is right and just, and have every intention to continue until their views and beliefs become the law of the land.

Clearly, there are still very active "Pro-Life" terror cells out there, and with the intense media focus on this issue, no doubt many of these groups have been energized and motivated to strike at more and more targets. We should carefully monitor all communications on the militant "Right to Life" message boards, where there has been a great deal of rejoicing in Dr. Tiller's murder (in much the same way Al Queda supporters rejoiced after 9/11). Clearly these individuals are dangerous, and are very likely to possess information on the plans and resources of these terror cells. They should be detained and interrogated immediately and not released until we are sure we have wrung the last bit of information out of them.

They shouldn't mind, as that group in general tends to be very supportive of enhanced interrogation techniques such as water-boarding.

Apparently water boarding, rendition and holding people without trial is only for Muslim terrorists. Did they torture McVeigh to get information?(he quite a few people) The members of the Weather Underground from the 60's were never tortured. There may be an element of bigotry here.

After all, has one non-Muslim terrorists been tortured or held without charges by the US?