Skewering Ehrenreich

Barbara Ehrenreich has never been accused of being fair, balanced, accurate, or well-informed. She has, however, made high-gloss hatred of all things right of center into quite a little racket for herself.

As with her hatchet job over the weekend comparing George W. Bush with King George III.

Ehrenreich says:

George III is accused, for example, of "depriving us in many cases of the benefits of Trial by Jury." Our own George II has imprisoned two U.S. citizens — Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi — since 2002, without benefit of trials, legal counsel or any opportunity to challenge the evidence against them. Even die-hard Tories Scalia and Rehnquist recently judged such executive hauteur intolerable.

Reading Ehrenreich, one gets the impression that Hamdi and Padilla are the first Americans since King George III's time to be detained "without benefit of trials, legal counsel or any opportunity to challenge the evidence against them." In fact, such detentions have occurred at least twice in our history: (1) During the Civil War, President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, then detained at least 13,000 suspected rebels and subversives. Those detained were not charged with crimes, were not allowed legal counsel, and were not given a hearing before a judge. (2) Within days of the Pearl Harbor attack, President Roosevelt approved the imposition of martial law in Hawaii, allowing military authorities there to detain hundreds of suspected subversives, mostly (but not exclusively) Japanese Americans. Again, those detained were not charged with a crime and were not given access to legal counsel.