"Who Should be Considered the Worst Civil Liberties President in US History?"

An interesting post.  Excerpts:

...If one were simply to consider specific acts which constituted grave assaults on civil liberties - narrowly defined as the core political rights explicitly protected by the Bill of Rights: free speech, freedom from deprivation of life and liberty without due process, etc. - one could make a strong argument for several presidents. John Adams signed The Alien and Sedition Acts, which essentially criminalized certain forms of government criticism in preparation for a war with France, a radical assault on the First Amendment.

Abraham Lincoln illegally suspended the core liberty of habeas corpus without Congressional approval. Wilson's attacks on basic free speech in the name of national security were indeed legion and probably unparalleled. Franklin Roosevelt oversaw the due-process-free internment of more than 100,000 law-abiding Japanese-Americans into concentration camps.

And then there are the two War on Terror presidents. George Bush seized on the 9/11 attack to usher in radical new surveillance and detention powers in the PATRIOT ACT, spied for years on the communications of US citizens without the warrants required by law, and claimed the power to indefinitely imprison even US citizens without charges in military brigs.

His successor, Barack Obama, went further by claiming the power not merely to detain citizens without judicial review but to assassinate them (about which the New York Times said: "It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing"). He has waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, dusting off Wilson's Espionage Act of 1917 to prosecute more then double the number of whistleblowers than all prior presidents combined. And he has draped his actions with at least as much secrecy, if not more so, than any president in US history.

Ultimately, it is close to impossible to rank these abuses strictly as a qualitative matter, in terms of the powers seized. How does one say that interning citizens in concentration camps (Roosevelt) is better or worse than imprisoning people for dissent (Adams and Wilson), putting people in cages with no charges (Lincoln, Bush, Obama), or claiming the power to execute citizens in total secrecy and without any checks of any kind (Obama)? If anything, one could reasonably argue that the power of due-process-free executions is the most menacing since it's the only act that is permanent and irreversible.

Certainly, the quantity of abuse matters. In that regard, Roosevelt's interments and Wilson's free speech prosecutions would appear worse than, say, Adams' attacks on dissent, Bush's indefinite detentions, or Obama's citizen assassinations.

Moreover, it is one of the ironies of US history that civil liberties erosions are often accompanied by civil liberties progress from the same leader: Adams was integral in the founding of the republic and its rights-enshrining documents; Lincoln freed the slaves; Wilson supported women's suffrage; Roosevelt appointed two of the most sterling civil liberties advocates to the supreme court; Obama withdrew authorization for some torture techniques (ones that were not in use when he was inaugurated) and banned CIA black sites (ones that were empty when he assumed office)...

This is one key factor that distinguishes the War on Terror. By its nature, it will never end, at least not in the foreseeable future. It is a "war" far more in a metaphorical sense than a real one.

Since it began, both administrations who have waged it have expressly acknowledged its virtually indefinite - and thus unique - nature. In May 2009, when Obama unveiled his proposal for "preventive detention", he said: "Unlike the Civil War or World War II, we can't count on a surrender ceremony to bring this journey to an end." He added that we'll still be fighting this war "a year from now, five years from now, and - in all probability - 10 years from now."

Just last week, the Washington Post reported that the Obama administration is creating permanent bureaucratic systems to implement its War on Terror powers as it "expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years". Specifically, "among senior Obama administration officials, there is broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade." That "suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism."

Civil liberties abuses justified by a finite war can be awful while they last, but then they cease. Abuses that are systematized based on the premise that they are to be permanent do far more than that: they radically alter the nature of the government and the relationship of the political class to the citizenry.

This, to me, has always been the most uniquely pernicious aspect of the War on Terror civil liberties assaults of the last decade: they will not end when the "war" does because the "war" will have no end. Each new power is embedded permanently into the political framework, incrementally transforming the political culture and the species of government itself...

The piece goes on. It's well worth your time. And if you don't remember reading about President Bush and President Obama's violations of civil liberties Greenwald cites, follow the links therein.