It would have been inconceivable 50 years ago for any
> president to ask for the power of indefinite detention.
I don't mean to distract from Carrol's broader point, which I think is a good one. But while past presidents might never have asked for the power of indefinite detention, they certainly exercised it on a scale unimaginable today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_American_internment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_internment
Obama's detention policy, which would require at least allegations of individual crimes, is arguably a step up from the Wilson/Roosevelt/Truman variety, for which ethnicity sufficed.
Which is to say nothing of the internments, at various times, of indigenous North Americans (the origins of the modern reservation), trade unionists, etc.
Of course there are important things to be said, hopefully by someone more clever than me, about the meaning of the drive to legalize such abuses. But I don't think the situation is quite so straightforward as a clear downward trajectory.
-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."