Crime.

Editor,

I have a serious problem with calling starting a war on the basis of bald-faced lies a "mistake." I call it a crime. As I call outing Valerie Plame -- because her husband proved unequivocally that one of the lies upon which the war was based was a lie -- a crime. And I call torture a crime.

I also call this defense appropriations spending bill that the president is going to sign a crime. Everyone seems to think this law will be applied to actual "suspected terrorists," but don't you understand that since suspicions of a detainee's terrorism do not need to be proved, this law can be used to lock up political enemies of whoever occupies the White House?

Am I paranoid? No. I am afraid of the creeping authoritarianism in what used to be The United States of America and is now on the verge of descending into a monstrosity that would warm Joseph Stalin's heart.

Re: "The Pungent Aroma of Paranoia" (12/18/2011)