On October 26, some two dozen reporters crammed into a conference room on the 18th floor of a concrete high-rise in downtown Newark to await the arrival of Hany Kiareldeen, a 31-year-old Palestinian man who, shortly before midnight on the previous day, had been released from the nearby Hudson County jail. An immigrant's release from prison does not normally occasion a press conference. But this case was far from typical. Kiareldeen, for one thing, had been incarcerated for 19 months without ever being formally charged of any crime. He had been separated from his family and deemed a threat to national security—on the basis of evidence he was not allowed to see.

Were it not for the butterfly ballots in Palm Beach
County and the Democratic Party's failure to insist on a statewide recount of the
Florida vote, the crisis that has engulfed America since September 11 would be
unfolding in a vastly different political landscape. Both houses of Congress
would still be controlled by Republicans. Attorney General John Ashcroft would
likely be in retirement. Tom Ridge, head of the new Office of Homeland Security,
and Tommy Thompson, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services,
would be, respectively, the governors of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And, of
course, the U.S. commander in chief would hail not from Texas but from Tennessee.