It's 1943. FDR is enagaged in a show trial of fifth columnists, and

he's opening internment camps for Japanese-Americans.

You care about the rule of law and race more than anything.

How do you vote?

But many leaders and a good part of the citizenry were calling for this sort of measure. The same thing happened in Canada.

They think that while they are in power that they are gods and can do all manner of scummy things.

Teamster organizer

Founding member of the SWP

One of the first victims of the Smith Act

It is impossible to actually predict how I would have behaved or thought if I were a different person with different experiences. So I didn't vote.


I can't imagine voting for a Republican though.

In 1996; he and his wife were wonderful (Korematsu v. U.S., the Supreme Court case that narrowly and wrongly approved the internment of Japanese-Americans - no, wait, just Americans of Japanese descent). What "show trial" are you referring to?

The Facts Don't Matter.

In 1942, George Dasch, pictured, led a team of eight Nazi saboteurs who landed on the beach on Long Island with plans to blow up factories up and down the Eastern seaboard. They were arrested by the FBI, and found guilty of war crimes in a military tribunal. The FBI claimed to have broken the spy ring and foiled the plot on its own. In fact, the FBI only became aware of it when Dasch went to FBI headquarters and turned himself and the others in. And though all the men were found guilty, one of them might not have been a spy at all, just an unlucky kid in the wrong place at the wrong time. How this case became a Supreme Court precedent, Ex Parte Quirin, used to justify current administration policies on detaining enemy combatants, despite the problems in the original case.  Available here via RealAudio.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/