How secure are our rights?

Here is a quote that is timely. It is from a book about the Mexican "repatriation" (coerced emigration or unconstitutional deportation would be more accurate language) that took place in the 1930s. The book is the second edition of Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s and will be available sometime in 2006.

"In 1942, another minority group, the Japanese, also learned the bitter lesson that constitutional guarantees are meaningless when mob hysteria is accorded institutional or legal status." -Francisco E. Balderrama

I've long said that our constitutional rights are not worth the paper they are written on if the people who interpret our rights (the courts) and the people whose responsibility it is to protect our rights (the executive) are venal.