Homeland Insecurity

Continued bombings in Iraq, North Korea threatening to test a nuclear bomb, Bush marching straight toward war with Iran, school shootings in the U.S. ... Sure, that's scary, but this is scarier:

Attorney David Lane said that on June 16, Steve Howards was walking his 7-year-old son to a piano practice, when he saw Cheney surrounded by a group of people in an outdoor mall area... According to the lawsuit filed at U.S. District Court in Denver, Howards and his son walked to... where Cheney was standing, and said to the vice president, "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible," or words to that effect, then walked on. Ten minutes later, according to Howards' lawsuit, he and his son were walking back through the same area, when they were approached by [a] Secret Service agent..., who asked Howards if he had "assaulted" the vice president. Howards denied doing so, but was nonetheless placed in handcuffs and taken to the Eagle County Jail.

Arrested for dissent - it sounds like something that happened in Stalin's USSR or maybe in Saddam's Iraq. There and then, of course, the arrested risked being tortured or killed - not like here and now.

Oh, wait. As Matthew Yglesias points out (expanding on something said by Andrew Sullivan),

you have to look at this sort of thing in the context of our novel torture and detention policies. They could have had Howard detained indefinitely without trial. While in detention, Howard could have been subjected to "coercive interrogation" designed at producing a confession. At a quasi-judicial proceeding, the coerced interrogation could have been used as evidence against him and kept secret from his legal team.

Absolutely terrifying.