Must-Read Rudy

I have been trying to explain to friends recently why I am so horrified by the prospects of a Rudy presidency. It is hard to articulate that fear without sounding shrill, or like you are trying to use hyperbole to tar and feather the guy. But in all honesty, to me, Giuliani would be far more dangerous and authoritarian than Bush has been. It is hard to imagine a more dangerous man than Bush, but Rudy fits the bill.

Here is a snippet from a piece in today's Washington Post:

You wouldn't know it from reading the papers, but the favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination is a confirmed right-winger. On issues such as free speech and religion, secrecy and due process, civil rights and civil liberties, pornography and democracy, this moralist and self-styled lawman has exhibited all the key hallmarks of Bush-era conservatism.

That candidate is Rudolph W. Giuliani.

As any New Yorker can tell you, the last word anyone in the 1990s would have attached to the brash, furniture- breaking mayor was "liberal" -- and the second-to-last was "moderate." With his take-many-prisoners approach to crime and his unerring pro-police instincts, the prosecutor-turned-proconsul made his mark on the city not by embracing its social liberalism but by trying to crush it