Abuses of power.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note - The Conspirator - Movie review

I saw a really good movie recently. It's called The Conspirator, and it's about John Wilkes Booth's plot to assassinate President Lincoln, and whether all the convicted conspirators were actually guilty.

The film, directed with great skill by Robert Redford, focuses on Mary Surratt, who tan the boarding house where several of the conspirators stayed and where Booth visited. Powerfully played by Robin Wright, the strong character of Surratt comes through, as does the ambiguity of the evidence against her.

James McAvoy plays her attorney, Frederick Aiken, who becomes obsessed with proving that there isn't sufficient evidence against her, and with demonstrating that the Executive Branch will go to any lengths to convict her in a rigged military tribunal.

Kevin Kline almost steals the show with his cynical portrayal of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a Cheney-like character who insists on convictions at all costs in a classic ends-justifies-the-means argument.

Redford implicitly draws a parallel between this military tribunal and the denial of due process down in Guantanamo--a solid point about how our democratic ideals can vanish so easily in times of war and crisis.

It's a point made all the sharper by the latest WikiLeaks document dump, which reveals that at least one prisoner there was dragged along on a dog leash and made to urinate on himself.

So go see The Conspirator. It's all too relevant today, I'm afraid.

After the glorious protests in the old of February and March here in Madison, which we wrote about in our April issue, a lull has set in, as my colleague Ruth Conniff notes in her story this month. People are busy getting recall petitions signed, but the huge demonstrations that so inspired the nation have ceased--at least for the moment. Governor Scott Walker's anti-labor law has been suspended by a...