Liberty, Death, Patrick Henry and 9/11 When I say the foremost right is the right to live, I mean the right not to get murdered just because you work in a skyscraper. I agree with Hasan that the words of Patrick Henry are a stirring call to sacrifice...but Henry was giving his life for a reason, and a damn good one; it wasn't a pointless death in the searing heat of jet fuel.

By the same token, Hasan asks if our current president has read the constitution. I've never quite understood why the Bush administration has taken so much heat from civil libertarians...it is the job of the judiciary to determine constitutionality. Every president has had to send his Justice Department attorneys to the Supreme Court to defend his policies...some you win, some you lose. If the current climate strikes some as too constrictive, lay it at the feet of the Supreme Court, not the Executive Branch.

To accuse this president of fascist tendencies, as some on the left have done, while he stands time and time again in word and deed for the cause of freedom, and while we see real, substantive change happening in areas where it was previously thought impossible, seems very disingenuous to me.  ¶ 8:10 PM