Goodbye Magna Carta article in the Times about the ridiculous anti protest legislation brought in by this government. I was rather ashamed to read the following:

Twenty miles from London, along the Thames, you will find a field opposite an island in the river. The field contains a monument erected by the American Bar Association. In the field next to it there is a memorial garden to John F Kennedy commemorating his role in the civil rights movement. Why on earth, you may imagine, are there American monuments in fields by the Thames? There are no other monuments. There is nothing to commemorate anything British.

Perhaps an important figure in American history was born there? Nope. The site is far more important to the American people than that. On that unmarked island in 1215 something was written down that more than 500 years later became the fifth amendment of the American Bill of Rights. “No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned . . . or in any other way destroyed . . . except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to none will we deny or delay, right or justice.”

Contrast this with the way we seem to have taken it for granted and allowed our freedoms to be eroded. At least the guys mentioned in the article are doing something about it.