NORTH CAROLINA LAW-PROFESSOR-BLOGGER ERIC MULLER is all over the Howard Coble story. I meant to blog this yesterday, but as you may have noticed it was a light-blogging day — faculty meetings and assorted other projects do get in the way of this hobby from time to time.

Anyway, Coble expressed the view — which Muller correctly calls “bizarre” — that the Japanese-American internments were for their own protection. Uh, right. As Muller notes:

Folks, this is the guy running the show on homeland security in the House of Representatives. The guy who will have oversight over how well Tom Ridge’s new department is balancing national security with individual liberties.

If he’s not already doing so, Dennis Hastert should be looking for a new Chairman for Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

Indeed. Muller also paints a larger political picture that Karl Rove should probably pay attention to.

UPDATE: Here’s a suggestion that Coble doesn’t even know the history of his own party on the subject.