What would Stalin do?

John McCain said on The daily Show the other day that the administration was aware of its many errors and had learned from its mistakes. This was of course an evasive answer to the question from host Jon Stewart which was something like “are they all a bunch of F#$%(#@ idiots?”

Evasive and false: this administration continues relentlessly to pursue George Bush’s ambition to be the sole “decider” and the author of justice without hindrance from courts or representatives of the American people. According to The NewYork Times today, a draft of a new proposal is circulating that would allow the Royal Nonesuch to conduct trials in absentia and would allow hearsay evidence. Even the Salem Witch trials offered the accused a better shot at justice.

If George learned anything from the Supreme Court decision to deny the use of military tribunals for Guantanamo “detainees” or if George Bush is aware that his policies are in error, the evidence is lacking. As in many things he will stay the crooked course, following the dictates of some power higher than the Constitution and laws of the United States of America until he is able to hold summary executions with kangaroo courts, unrepentant tyrant that he is.

In a time when things that have been public record for decades can be re-classified as a matter of pretend National Security; at a time when classifying misdeeds and crimes is routine, at a time when anyone, citizen or not can be accused of being an “enemy combatant,” Bush’s insistence that trials that allow hearsay accusations that are at the whim of a prosecutor, “credible,” seem nothing short of the tactics of the Grand Inquisitor.

A White House spokesman is quoted as saying “We are in the middle of a process of getting reaction from the various stakeholders, and that is why we circulated a draft.” One can only speculate with horror as to who those “stakeholders” are likely to be although as US citizens and human beings, we are all stakeholders. If we have a government that yearns to be able to say with pride that “we can do anything to anyone at any time and if you disagree, you’re an enemy combatant” then we are no longer a country that deserves to continue, but rather a rogue state, a tyrannical state with nuclear weapons and the desire to dominate the world. While he is reluctant to admonish Bush or his party in front of an audience, McCain is none the less reported to oppose this travesty for the obvious reason that it would expose our troops to equally horrific things should they fall into the hands of an enemy.

Have we not come to the point where impeachment and immediate impeachment is the last, best hope to save our country from this man and his party? Perhaps even to ask is to invite a secret trial and a sordid death in the basement of some secret prison.