This is the best article I’ve found on the current state of politics in America. It’s titled “Fighting Terror with Fear.”

Military legal experts have formed one of the most influential bulwarks against the administration’s attempt to rewrite the rules to make its recent behavior retroactively legal. This week, the White House sank so low as to strong-arm the chief prosecutors for the four armed services into writing a letter to the House of Representatives that seemed to endorse the president’s position on two key issues. Congressional officials say those officers later told lawmakers that they did not want to sign the letter, which contradicts everything the prosecutors, dozens of their colleagues, former top commanders of the military and a series of federal judges have said in public.

The idea that the nation’s chief executive is pressing so hard to undermine basic standards of justice is shocking. Any argument that these extreme methods would be used only against the most dangerous of international terrorists has been destroyed by the handling of hundreds of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, many of whom appear to have been scooped up in Afghanistan years ago with little attempt to verify any connection to terrorism, and now are in danger of lingering behind bars forever without a day in court.

This week, nine current and former federal judges, including a former FBI director appointed by Ronald Reagan, begged Congress not to give in to White House pressure on this point. “For 200 years, the federal judiciary has maintained Chief Justice Marshall’s solemn admonition that ours is a government of laws, and not of men,” their letter said. “The proposed legislation imperils this proud history.”

The nation is in this hideous mess because Bush ignored the advice of people like this when he tried to set up prison camps beyond the reach of the law. It’s hard to believe their warnings will be ignored again, but the signs are ominous.