Part of the right-wing pushback against the criticism of the Cheney-Kristol attack on US Justice Dept lawyers who dared to represent terrorism suspects --
Cesar Conda at The Corner -- The John Adams analogy that Ken Starr and the other lawyers cite in their statement is ludicrous: At the time of the Boston Massacre we were not at war and the British soldiers he defended were in court facing a criminal charge of murder. Adams was not representing prisoners of war, enemies of the nation, trying to get them released in the middle of a war.
The Boston Massacre was in 1770. So there was no "we" -- there was no United States of America. But of course, war is coming, but Conda wants that war circumscribed by when it was declared and when it ended, not the open ended definition now in vogue. And most striking is the lack of historical self-awareness. In 1770, the "enemies of the nation" were the independence-minded colonists i.e. what we now call Americans.
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