[Overpaid Slacker]

tabs, you and I agree on a lot of fronts, but here's where we part company. If you're convicted of a serious enough crime (esp. given the advantages criminal defendants have in the US) then you forfeit a number of civil liberties, for the benefit of the rest of us.

To me, it's like treating the war on terror as another law enforcement/procsecution matter. To quote James Taranto (WSJ's Opinion Journal Best of the Web Editor):
Extending to the enemies of civilization the full panoply of due-process protections criminal defendants enjoy--the presumption of innocence, protection from self-incrimination, the right to a lawyer, and so on--makes it harder to gather intelligence and prevent future attacks. Three thousand people died on Sept. 11, but at least Mohamed Atta's civil liberties were never violated. Don't you wish they had been?"

I don't buy the slippery slope argument in this context (although I think it's got merit in the judicial activism realm I referred to above). These events are tragedies, more so b/c you and I could've prevented them by taking back our own judicial system to prevent it. In addition to profoundly saddened, I'm ashamed that our system produces these results.

JP