"In Chicago, a federal judge recently permitted two Israeli agents to testify anonymously against two men accused of aiding the Palestinian group Hamas, designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization since 1995. Judge Amy J. St. Eve said that the right to learn a witness’ identity was 'not absolute’ and that the use of pseudonyms for the Israeli agents was justified because of their assignments," reports the Los Angeles Times.

St. Eve, obviously, does not have even a rudimentary understanding of the Sixth Amendment. It declares "the accused shall … be confronted with the witnesses against him" and says nothing about protecting witnesses. Reading the amendment, one would deduce that if the accused, for whatever reason, is unable to face his accusers, the state does not have a case.

But then, ever since Reagan, the federal courts have been packed with authoritarian ideologues, social and political troglodytes who have consistently undermined the Bill of Rights at every turn. The U.S. Court of Appeals is rife with this sort, thanks to the diligent work of the Federalist Society and other fascist organizations. Under Bush the Junior, they are rapidly reaching a predictable vertex.

Obviously, the demands of Israel trump the rights of American citizens, as America is now, and has been for some time, Israeli occupied territory. "Defense attorneys in … three cases have argued, with mixed results, that allowing U.S. prosecutors to keep the witnesses’ identities secret—as demanded by Israel to protect its agents—violates their clients’ constitutional right to confront their accusers…. Though courts have allowed witnesses to testify in secured courtrooms or found other ways to protect their identities when they might be in danger, experts say it is extraordinary to keep the identities secret even from defense attorneys."

Of course, in Bushzarro world, where torture and massive snooping are the order of the day, such is hardly extraordinary. It is simply but one detail of an emerging pattern, part and parcel of the Straussian weltanschauung. In addition to sabotaging the Constitution, allowing foreigners to dictate how it shall be implemented, or rather violated, these fascist judges are moving toward a new Lochner era, as epitomized by judge Douglas Ginsburg, a former White House regulatory czar and unsuccessful Supreme Court nominee. Ginsburg would like to see a return to child labor and a slashing of wage and worker protection laws. But then, as "communist" China is the emerging corporate template, Ginsburg’s views should not come as a surprise, nor should the return to court trials that resemble Stalin’s kangaroo trials or the German Schauprozess (show trials) under the Nazis.

"Israel doesn’t conduct our criminal procedures, and there is no reason why a defendant’s rights in court should be determined by Israeli criminal procedure," Richard Friedman, a 6th Amendment expert, told the Los Angeles Times.

But why not? They run our foreign policy, so if makes perfect sense, in a neocon sort of way, for them to run our legal system as well.

Call it the Israelization of America. Our soldiers and spooks now torture and kill Iraqis, Afghans, assorted South Asians and Arabs, same as the Israelis torture and kill Palestinians. In Israel, judge Sarah Zerota determines ahead of time the guilt of Marwan Barghouti, screaming at him in the courtroom, while here in America, for now, things are a bit more sedate as the court strips away the constitutional rights of people accused of collaborating with Hamas, that is to say the democratically elected government of Palestine.

Meanwhile, out here in the hinterlands, few are the wiser.

Of course, after the economy turns sour, as it already has, never mind the cavalcade of Richie Rich talking heads on Fox and elsewhere telling us the opposite, this undermining of the Constitution will be used against non-Arab Americans, as increasingly all opposition to the government will be considered terrorism, especially during a crisis, never mind that so-called crisis will be engineered by the banksters and the ruling elite, their ranks filled with no shortage of neocons and their ideological kissing cousins, the "free trade"—the freedom to plunder and loot—neoliberals.