By Tom Engelhardt| Mon May. 24, 2010 2:08 PM PDT

How convenient that there are Muslims in America. How much harder it would be for the government to increase its power, while abridging more general liberties, if they didn't exist. A radical Islamic preacher, who also happens to be an American citizen, is now hiding out somewhere in Yemen inciting violence against this country. What's the solution? Simple: add him to the CIA's "kill list," send in the drones (though we are not at war with Yemen), and execute him. Better yet, call that act a "targeted killing" and you don't have to worry about the legal niceties associated with the word "assassination."

An American citizen of Pakistani birth leaves the least well-made smoking car bomb in history in Times Square. What a good moment to "protect" Americans from the evildoers lurking behind him by carving out a "broad exception" to his Miranda rights and delaying speedy court hearings. It's like a yard sale. You get two previously well accepted rights curtailed for the price of one.

When it comes to homegrown threats of terror or a suspicion that a citizen might be related to a "foreign terrorist organization," why not make another exception and just strip him of his citizenship, then send him to Guantanamo and throw away the key (something Senator Joe Lieberman is now advocating)? As Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com has written, such examples "are designed to formally exempt a certain class of American citizens... from the most basic legal protections. They're all intended, in the name of Scary Terrorists, to rewrite the core rules of our justice system in order to increase the already-vast detention powers of the US Government and further minimize the remaining safeguards against abuse."