So now the administration knows that it can make unsubstantiated claims, without paying a price when those claims prove false, and that saber rattling gains it votes and silences opposition. Maybe it will honorably refuse to act on this dangerous knowledge. But I can't help worrying that in domestic politics, as in foreign policy, this war will turn out to have been the shape of things to come.
--Paul Krugman (21 March 2003)

I make no bones about it. We would do well, before it is too late, to heed Sir Thomas More’s advice to Will Roper, his protege-turned-vigilante, in the play A Man for All Seasons.
And when the last law was cut down and the devil turned around on you,
where would you hide, the laws all being flat?
Do you really think that you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
Bloggers of all political persuasions have the right to speak and act freely in opposition to the laws of this world all being flat, without being treated as terrorists by our own government. This is, after all, still our world. And if we truly love our sole homelands, we must take them back.
· Double-speak [TomPaine]