Under John Adams there was the Alien and Sedition Act, mainly used to stifle criticism of Adams' administration.  Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War; a war of such "patriotic" fervor that "substitutes" were paid to join the army by others rich enough to afford the $300 necessary to buy another man's services and avoid serving personally.  Like George the Lesser and Dick the Puppeteer and other chickenhawk creators and cheerleaders of the Iraq invasion and occupation would have done had they lived during the Civil War.

Post WWI saw the notorious actions of the Justice Department's Palmer Raids
in which J. Edgar Hoover made his name known as head of the Intelligence Division of the DOJ.  By 1920, Hoover and the Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer had organized the largest mass arrests in U.S. history, rounding up at least 10,000 individuals.  All foreign aliens arrested were deported with no requirement of evidence against them.

During WWII American citizens of Japanese descent were interned in miserable concentration camps, losing their homes, jobs, and businesses.  In the late 1940's and 1950's came the witch hunts of HUAC, McCarthyism and blacklisting.

According to Sunday's New York Times article, recently declassified documents indicate that in 1950, J. Edgar Hoover, infamous former director of the FBI, hypocrite and tyrant, "had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty."  Seventy-five percent of these were American citizens.  He apparently wanted to beat his 1920 historical record.  Hoover would decide who was disloyal and wanted Harry S Truman to back his play.  There is no evidence that Truman or any other president assented to Hoover's plan.  (Wonder which dress Hoover planned to wear for the mass arrests?)

Again history is repeating itself.  I wrote this on 12/10/07, "Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), bosom pal of intelligence agencies; who knew about waterboarding in 2003 and the CIA's destruction of torture tapes and did nothing, is the author of this reprehensible legislation. 

"Her bill, written in part by intel agencies and the politicized Bushite Department of Homeland Security, creates a HUAC like commission appointed by the president to "investigate" terrorism which could target such disparate groups as peace activists, animal rights organizations, Muslims, etc; or those with an "extremist belief system.   As Saul Friedman on Watchdog Blog points out, "....what is an extremist belief system?  Who decides and how?"  To read the rest of my post, check this month's archives for "H.R. 1955 A Democrat's McCarthy Impersonation."  

If members of the House of Representatives, especially Democrats, actually read Harman's insidious bill, they should have voted no or Democratic leaders refused to bring it to the floor.  Sounds like a repeat of the Patriot Act vote; representatives or their appropriate staff members haven't read it (or don't understand it, perish the thought) and therefore have no idea of the dangerous, unconstitutional provisions in it, but vote for it anyway; unless they did read it and didn't care, which is even worse.  

This blatantly unconstitutional bill passed the House 404 to 6!  And these are our elected representatives who ignore the electorate outside the beltway who are wiser and often more knowledgeable than the "serious" polticos on Capitol Hill.

It's deja vu all over again, and the Constitution is taking yet another beating. Let us hope that the American people sincerely believe in protecting their Constitution and echo the late, great member of the US House of Representatives from Texas, Barbara Jordan who said "My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution." 

We sorely need more representatives like Barbara Jordan now, and more of the  regular American people like those who elected her to get more involved.