Wow, and he's a SENATOR

Today John Cornyn said the most thuddingly stupid thing I've ever seen in print.

“None of your civil liberties matter much after you’re dead,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a former judge and close ally of the president who sits on the Judiciary Committee.

It's one thing to honestly disagree about the authority of the president in wartime (as tortured as that argument can become). It's quite another to use this scare tactic to argue for a kingship.

Once again, Sen. Feingold was right there with the response:

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who has led a bipartisan filibuster against a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, quoted Patrick Henry, an icon of the American Revolution, in response: “Give me liberty or give me death.”

He called Cornyn’s comments “a retreat from who we are and who we should be.”

Reductive arguments like Cornyn's are not helpful in a time of Constitutional crisis.