What times. Give the government the power to assassinate terrorists, comes the call on chat shows. Don't burden citizens with the obligation of serving on juries for people who hate us, say the TV audiences. Spare us the circus of long public trials, say the letters to the editor. According to most polls, approximately 60 percent of Americans wholeheartedly endorse such measures through the vehicle of President Bush's recently ordered military tribunals. The figures also show that many of those same Americans seem to feel that such measures will affect only a few noncitizens and that the real subject of such tribunals will be Osama bin Laden. "They had to do it this way because you can't make a law against just one person," opines a friend.

Yet there are about 17 million noncitizen residents in America. By the terms of President Bush's order of November 13, all those people are now effectively living under martial law. I think that's a tad overbroad, although I concede that my opinion is currently in the minority. Rather, I wish to pursue my concern that the practical divide between "aliens" and "citizens" is a very thin one, one that is melting away quickly beneath the sun of this go-for-the-throat, to-hell-with-human-rights rage.

If Osama bin Laden is the icon by which noncitizens are deprived of constitutional protections, my sense is that O.J. Simpson has re-emerged as the justification for doing the same to certain citizens. "We wouldn't want Johnnie Cochran trying Osama," I keep hearing. "He'd end up in Florida, playing golf with O.J."

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