Newt Gingrich: Frightened Senseless?

Glenn Greenwald, "Newt Gingrich, supreme fear-monger"

Even when set against all the reckless fear-mongering being spewed in response to last week's Supreme Court ruling -- which merely held that our Government can't abolish the constitutional guarantee of habeas corpus and must provide minimum due process to people before locking them in cages for life -- this comment by Newt Gingrich on Face the Nation this weekend is in a class all by itself:

On the other hand, I will say, the recent Supreme Court decision to turn over to a local district judge decisions of national security and life and death that should be made by the president and the Congress is the most extraordinarily arrogant and destructive decision the Supreme Court has made in its history. . . . . Worse than Dred Scott, worse than–because–for this following reason: . . .

This court decision is a disaster which could cost us a city. And the debate ought to be over whether or not you're prepared to risk losing an American city on behalf of five lawyers . . . .

We better not allow people we seek to imprison for life to have access to a court -- or require our Government to show evidence before it encages people for decades -- otherwise . . . we'll "lose a city."

Casually threatening Americans with the loss of a city unless they allow their Government to violate core constitutional guarantees is deranged fear-mongering in its most unadorned form, exactly what every two-bit tyrant tells his country about why they must be deprived of basic liberties. But what makes it all the more notable is how repeatedly Gingrich invokes this same deranged formulation in order to argue for a whole array of policies he supports -- we better accept what Gingrich wants or else we'll "lose a city" ....