David Davis' Resignation and fight over civil liberty

[James Cox]

On 13 Jun 2008, at 15:51, Ian Mason wrote:

>
> On 13 Jun 2008, at 14:38, Roland Perry wrote:
>
>> What I struggle to understand is why there needs to be a hard  
>> deadline to "put up or shut up".
>
> Why you struggle to understand is that you've never been in this  
> position. Try to imagine having the whole apparatus of state hanging  
> over your head. Possibly you can be hauled off to be interrogated at  
> a moments notice, then possibly detained incommunicado for a long  
> time. That's a lot of stress and you would, quite naturally, want it  
> to go away. Moreover, it's precisely that kind of stress that leads  
> people to make up confessions just to reach a definite ending.

A hard deadline makes it legally acceptable to even go down this path.  
it is both the shield and the torment. The alternate- a blank cheque -  
is so unconstitutional as to not even be relevant.