On the Choice of the Courts to Support and Condone Illegality against American Citizens

Are we children, too young to reassert our own reality, frightened at each crash of thunder, at each cry of 'terror'?

Is this the 1790s, that the government may turn against its own people, that merely opposing political views turn the might of the American military inwards?

Have the courts lost their minds, that they may, by due process of law, authorize a violation of privacy and of fair criminal investigation that they do injury to the Constitution, penned by our forebears, set as the law of the land?

Does the departing president truly believe that the safety provided by a sacrifice of freedom is enough to shelter that selfsame freedom from harm?

Perhaps Mr. W. Bush takes his example from John Adams. An honorable, if egocentric, man, whose presidency, combined with the monetary mismanagement of the father of our country George Washington, nearly ran this country into the ground before it had even begun. Threat of war with France - or Britain - looming high on the horizon, spies were everywhere, and conflict had not even begun. The Alien and Sedition Acts, signed in a moment of weakness, thrown into effect with bold cowardice, dawned a dark day on American history, and the PATRIOT Act did nothing different.

One may not negotiate with terrorists; one must hunt them down and eradicate them, destroying their cause and sapping their will to fight. The fight against threats from abroad should never be taken with the same methods against those with legal citizenship within our fair country.

Does citizenship of the United States mean nothing, in terms of freedoms, rights, justices that other nations do not have? Must we exercise force the same way to every suspect of terror, regardless of the rule of law?

This court has made the wrong decision. It is my most sincere hope that they do not insist upon it for long.

Signed: Thomas Jefferson