I think that we need a revised version of Godwin’s Law for anyone who trots out 9/11 as the justification for giving the government sweeping powers that allow it to ride roughshod over the constitution and human and civil rights. New Jersey governor Chris Christie is the latest to hide his authoritarian nature behind the events of 9/11, even stooping to biblical language about ‘widows and orphans’.

The revised Godwin’s Law would state that if the only argument that you have for some anti-civil liberties measure is to say “Have you forgotten 9/11?” or a variant, then you have lost the argument. We could call it Lovejoy’s Law, after Helen Lovejoy of The Simpsons fame.