That was the sarcastic name used decades ago by conservatives who resented our state's sometimes astonishingly liberal tendencies. But these days, it's taking on a newer, more ominous meaning.

It was bad enough that John Ashcroft announced last Monday from Moscow--honestly!--that the Bush Administration will imprison US citizens indefinitely, without charges, access to defense lawyers, or trial.

I am not making this up.

That came only a few days after our own state's constitution-thrashing announcement: the Washington State Patrol has resumed its post-9/11 random searches of cars boarding state ferries, as though a niggling little problem called the 4th Amendment and the Bill of Rights did not exist. (Prohibiting government from, um, random searches and seizures.)

Apparently, that amendment, and the document it's part of, no longer count.

We're at war, we're told. Or, we're not told anything; the Seattle Times buried this gem in one sentence in the sixth paragraph of the next morning's story.

The headline, and each of the other 27 paragraphs, detailed the mostly spurious accusations against Jose Padilla, a US citizen said by our government to have been assisting Al Qaeda in its efforts to detonate a low- grade nuclear bomb in the United States.

The Times story devoted more lines to Padilla's traffic violations in the '90s than to John Ashcroft's assaults on 213 years of American jurisprudence. And it gave no space at all to the serious doubts, raised mostly in British and European media, that the evidence against Padilla would hold up in a court of law.

(In the Bad Old Soviet Days, Russians would turn to shortwave radio to get more objective news about their own country from other lands. Sound familiar?)

Padilla was arrested over a month ago. Ashcroft must've been waiting for just the right symbolic moment to announce that he, and presumably his employer, have decided to officially suspend the US Constitution. Mark the date of its official retirement: June 13, 2002. (Okay, we'll keep the Second Amendment.) All those now-underemployed former Communist Party bosses, their dreams of the perfect totalitarian state shattered for the last dozen years, could take Johnovich out to dinner after his press conference.

And hey, if Padilla's been in custody since May 8, and we're just being told about it, who else is being held?

The one thing Padilla's arrest does tell us about terrorism is that, like Richard Reid (the Brit with C-4 in his shoe), and John Walker Lindh before him, Padilla doesn't look Arabic or Central Asian--in other words, that racially profiling terror suspects is discriminatory at best, counter-productive at worst.

That raises the question of who our own State Patrol is targeting with their ferry searches; they won't say. The Washington State ACLU has asked the agency this, and a number of other pointed questions--like, for example, how can such a policy possibly be legal? Or effective?

The state Attorney General, Christine Gregoire, didn't see how it could possibly be constitutional--she said so in response to an inquiry from the State Patrol--but they went ahead anyway. The law, apparently, is for the rest of us, not for them.

In more honest parts of the world that's called a police state.

And not a very effective one, either. The "evidence" against Padilla, we learn mostly from the foreign press, wouldn't hold up in a court of law; they waited for his return to Chicago to arrest him because none of the other countries where he traveled thought there was probable cause. Here at home, the State Patrol's searches are a joke so far as enforcement goes, a symbolic appearance that serves only to, well, terrorize people--that is, show us who's boss. It certainly doesn't stop anyone from committing mayhem on the ferries. As state ACLU Legislative Director Gerry Sheehan notes, even non-commercial passengers are allowed 50 gallons of propane, plus gasoline, onto the ferry. And guns, and fireworks.

So what's being prevented?

Passengers who refuse searches, the State Patrol says, can always drive a different route. News flash: the Tacoma Narrows Bridge won't get you to Vashon, or the San Juans. The ferry system is an integral, and taxpayer-funded, part of our transportation system. Allowing ferry captains to refuse passengers who refuse supposedly random searches is, um, well, it's something you'd expect in a country where the police are now allowed to investigate or monitor anyone for any reason, such as their politics or religion, with no suspicion of crime.

That was an Ashcroft nugget, too. Any alarm bells here yet? Such as, that the FBI now has every single power the KGB had for decades?

Remember, we're told, we're at war. But unlike World War II--the purported model for much of this--we don't even know how victory can be defined, let alone what it will look like, and the same people have told us that this war will last at least 50 years. In other words, Ashcroft and Dubya plan to unilaterally suspend our constitution for a longer period of time than most of this world's countries have had their constitutions.

For the paranoid: no, I don't think that just because John Ashcroft has now announced that US citizens accused of aiding terrorists will be imprisoned indefinitely without charges, access to defense attorneys, or trial--and just because the same man has also explicitly accused critics of his policies as having abetted terrorists--I don't think it follows that he will start indefinitely imprisoning critics of his policies.

But then, I never thought it'd come this far, either.

Before John Ashcroft starts accusing anyone of treason, he should look in the mirror. And have another shot of vodka.