Like it or not, the issues of the war and civil liberties are intertwined.

The Bush Administration remains determined to marginalize dissent - viewed as the Administration as embarrasing and undermining the US war effort - by making every effort to render such protests invisible to the broader public by increasingly restricting freedom of assembly in public spaces - from San Francisco to NY's Fifth Ave. It's happening all over the country.

In Chicago, the Daley machine, ever mindful of the flow of federal funding from a White House and Congress in the hands of pro war conservatives - is also happy to comply. Despite the fact that a majority of Chicagoans oppose a war and occupation which has cost city tax payers 2.2 billion dollars to date, inflicted over 1,500 US casualities, and tens of thousands of Iraq dead. Not to mention a long history of police hostility to public anti-war protests that date back to the Democratic Convention here in 1968.

That's why asserting what remains of our constitutional rights are so critical at this time. Use em, or lose them.