It's not taxes. It's the passage of a new bill that would allow people on both sides of the political divide to be detained without trial.

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Sixty-four percent of Americans consider big government the biggest threat to the country, according to Gallup, but who knows what they mean by big government? Do 64 percent of Americans oppose the biggest big government threat in our history -- the virtually omniscient, omnipotent national-security state?

I doubt it, and neither the president nor many members of Congress seem fearful of public opposition to post-9/11, big-government authoritarianism. Instead, they cringe at the prospect of seeming soft on terrorism and rush to enact the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA,) including provisions that would arguably allow the indefinite detention without trial of American citizens, seized on American soil.

I won't repeat here the many urgent critiques of this bill emanating from the left and right. But I do want to stress that opposition to the NDAA spans some of the usual left/right divisions. Opposing the indefinite detention of American citizens, Tea Party Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) sounds like a speaker at an ACLU convention.

In response to libertarian concerns, the Senate has slightly amended, or qualified, the NDAA's assault on our most fundamental rights. But, at worst, the amendments are cosmetic efforts to obscure the bill's threat to American citizens; at best, they are ambiguous fallbacks, leaving open questions about the military's power to detain us forever without trial. In either case, Congress has declined to acknowledge and affirmatively protect our foundational freedom from arbitrary, unlawful imprisonment.