>...there were far greater violations of civil liberties in the past
>too - Lincoln suspending habeas corpus...
Is that your old Confederatist rightism peeking through? Lincoln, combatting a counterrevolutionary insurrection, had clear constitutional authority to do so (Congress being spread out weeks away from DC could only give its constitutionally required consent retroactively, since it was physically unable to act in the extreme emergency) and he would have been derelict if he had failed to act against Northern traitors actively aiding Southern traitors to make war against the country.
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not consent to be called Zeus."
Herakleitos of Ephesos