which is why I tried to qualify it somewhat...there are times when we, collectively, bitch about how bad things are getting...when we really don't know what bad is and haven't in quite some time and most likely won't ever (regardless of what you think of Bush and/or Republicans)

And yes, I agree the trends in the US are not great, but, for example, your link to HRW shows complaints about roughly 3 dozen "terrorists" (I know, quotes are because of the "how do we know if they're kept in secret") captured and detained over several years and Gitmo, folks caught in a theater of operations. The links provided for Iran show that they are targeting kids and taking in those kind of numbers in one night...and in many cases doing so for listening to "non-sanctioned" music, or reading the wrong books, or believing in the wrong deity.

And to add to that, they are politicizing the educational systems so that it will continue indefinitely. What would the left do here if Bush even THOUGHT of replacing the Dean of Harvard with, say, Karl Rove ;-)