R.I.P. Habeas Corpus

[D_Raay]

Since no one has touched on this much I guess I will.

You would think there would be mass protests over this. Are people not understanding the significance of this bill that just passed?

The Congress just gave the President despotic powers and you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to Dancing With the Stars. Can you imagine- we just reverted to 1788 and no one so much as bats and eyelash or wavers in their daily routine?


Bush & Co. has portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens to protect us against terrorism. Frightened they might lose their majority in Congress in the November elections, the Republicans rammed the bill through Congress with little substantive debate.

Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush's list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.

I feel like that guy that yelled out the window...

[sam i am]

This is a strawman, D_Raay, and you know it.

The new law goes along the lines of what the Supreme Court ruled the President and Congress had to do BY LAW....that is...

Create a way to deal with the number of terrorists and their funding organizations that fits within the framework of the Constitution and national security interests.

IF there's legal challenges (and you know there will be, so please don't be disingenuous about this), then clarification and further limits, we both know, will be embedded in case law and precedent will be set.

As for the shibboleth that "anyone or any organization" can be declared "enemy combatants" : that's poppycock. There's limits and parameters...as well as the inevitable law suits and lawyers getting rich (or, in the recent case, a slap on the wrist for helping KNOWN terrorists:rolleyes: ).

[Echewta]

If you are against this bill, you are for the terrorist.

[D_Raay]

This is a strawman, D_Raay, and you know it.

The new law goes along the lines of what the Supreme Court ruled the President and Congress had to do BY LAW....that is...

Create a way to deal with the number of terrorists and their funding organizations that fits within the framework of the Constitution and national security interests.

IF there's legal challenges (and you know there will be, so please don't be disingenuous about this), then clarification and further limits, we both know, will be embedded in case law and precedent will be set.

As for the shibboleth that "anyone or any organization" can be declared "enemy combatants" : that's poppycock. There's limits and parameters...as well as the inevitable law suits and lawyers getting rich (or, in the recent case, a slap on the wrist for helping KNOWN terrorists:rolleyes: ).
I am glad to see you can be so be so trustful of an administration that clearly deserves it.:rolleyes:

Read the law sam. It does not distinguish between "terrorist" and "American citizen". So far, the only legal challenges are coming from various civil right groups. When the Supreme Court overturns this I will agree with you.

[Bob]

(or, in the recent case, a slap on the wrist for helping KNOWN terrorists:rolleyes: ).

yeah, fuck people who defend known criminals, too, what's that about? where do they get off?

[Documad]

The new law goes along the lines of what the Supreme Court ruled the President and Congress had to do BY LAW....that is...
It's not my area of expertise, but this is untrue. The supreme court doesn't tell the congress what laws to pass. The supreme court, in some cases, looks at laws that have been passed to see if they meet minimal constitutional standards. In this instance, the supreme court decided that there was something wrong with what the president had been doing. I read the case and I don't remember the court telling us where the floor is, but they told us that what the president had been doing didn't even meet the floor. The supreme court certainly didn't set the ceiling.


There was a huge range of things the congress could have done in response. The congress was free to pass a law that gave us all more civil liberties and they chose not to. They certainly can't blame the supreme court for that.

[King PSYZ]

I'd like to know how one could secure a lawyer when one's being held without having their rights read indefinately until Bush so sees fit.

[Documad]

I'd like to know how one could secure a lawyer when one's being held without having their rights read indefinately until Bush so sees fit.
And even if you had a lawyer, the lawyer doesn't get to find out what you're accused of doing, so the lawyer's almost pointless.

[Echewta]

But they are a terrorist so what does it matter? :cool:

[D_Raay]

A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

We have been here before — and we have been here before led here — by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush.

We have been here when President John Adams insisted that the Alien and Sedition Acts were necessary to save American lives — only to watch him use those Acts to jail newspaper editors.

American newspaper editors, in American jails, for things they wrote, about America.

We have been here, when President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the Espionage Act was necessary to save American lives — only to watch him use that Act to prosecute 2,000 Americans, especially those he disparaged as "Hyphenated Americans," most of whom were guilty only of advocating peace in a time of war.

American public speakers, in American jails, for things they said, about America.

And we have been here when President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that Executive Order 9-0-6-6 was necessary to save American lives — only to watch him use that Order to imprison and pauperize 110-thousand Americans…

While his man-in-charge…

General DeWitt, told Congress: "It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen — he is still a Japanese."

American citizens, in American camps, for something they neither wrote nor said nor did — but for the choices they or their ancestors had made, about coming to America.

Each of these actions was undertaken for the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And each, was a betrayal of that for which the President who advocated them, claimed to be fighting.

Adams and his party were swept from office, and the Alien and Sedition Acts erased.

Many of the very people Wilson silenced, survived him, and…

…one of them even ran to succeed him, and got 900-thousand votes… though his Presidential campaign was conducted entirely… from his jail cell.

And Roosevelt's internment of the Japanese was not merely the worst blight on his record, but it would necessitate a formal apology from the government of the United States, to the citizens of the United States, whose lives it ruined.

The most vital… the most urgent… the most inescapable of reasons.

In times of fright, we have been, only human.

We have let Roosevelt's "fear of fear itself" overtake us.

We have listened to the little voice inside that has said "the wolf is at the door; this will be temporary; this will be precise; this too shall pass."

We have accepted, that the only way to stop the terrorists, is to let the government become just a little bit like the terrorists.

Just the way we once accepted that the only way to stop the Soviets, was to let the government become just a little bit like the Soviets.

Or substitute… the Japanese.

Or the Germans.

Or the Socialists.

Or the Anarchists.

Or the Immigrants.

Or the British.

Or the Aliens.

The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And, always, always… wrong.

"With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?"

Wise words.

And ironic ones, Mr. Bush.

Your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act.

You spoke so much more than you know, Sir.

Sadly — of course — the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously… was you.

We have a long and painful history of ignoring the prophecy attributed to Benjamin Franklin that "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

But even within this history, we have not before codified, the poisoning of Habeas Corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow.

You, sir, have now befouled that spring.

You, sir, have now given us chaos and called it order.

You, sir, have now imposed subjugation and called it freedom.

For the most vital… the most urgent… the most inescapable of reasons.

And — again, Mr. Bush — all of them, wrong.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has said it is unacceptable to compare anything this country has ever done, to anything the terrorists have ever done.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has insisted again that "the United States does not torture. It's against our laws and it's against our values" and who has said it with a straight face while the pictures from Abu Ghraib Prison and the stories of Waterboarding figuratively fade in and out, around him.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens "Unlawful Enemy Combatants" and ship them somewhere — anywhere — but may now, if he so decides, declare you an "Unlawful Enemy Combatant" and ship you somewhere - anywhere.

And if you think this, hyperbole or hysteria… ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was President, or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was President, or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was President.

And if you somehow think Habeas Corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an "unlawful enemy combatant" — exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this Attorney General is going to help you?

This President now has his blank check.

He lied to get it.

He lied as he received it.

Is there any reason to even hope, he has not lied about how he intends to use it, nor who he intends to use it against?

"These military commissions will provide a fair trial," you told us yesterday, Mr. Bush. "In which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney, and can hear all the evidence against them."

'Presumed innocent,' Mr. Bush?

The very piece of paper you signed as you said that, allows for the detainees to be abused up to the point just before they sustain "serious mental and physical trauma" in the hope of getting them to incriminate themselves, and may no longer even invoke The Geneva Conventions in their own defense.

'Access to an attorney,' Mr. Bush?

Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift said on this program, Sir, and to the Supreme Court, that he was only granted access to his detainee defendant, on the promise that the detainee would plead guilty.

'Hearing all the evidence,' Mr. Bush?

The Military Commissions act specifically permits the introduction of classified evidence not made available to the defense.

Your words are lies, Sir.

They are lies, that imperil us all.

"One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks," …you told us yesterday… "said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America."

That terrorist, sir, could only hope.

Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.

Habeas Corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The Moral Force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush… they would be "the beginning of the end of America."

And did it even occur to you once sir — somewhere in amidst those eight separate, gruesome, intentional, terroristic invocations of the horrors of 9/11 — that with only a little further shift in this world we now know — just a touch more repudiation of all of that for which our patriots died —

Did it ever occur to you once, that in just 27 months and two days from now when you leave office, some irresponsible future President and a "competent tribunal" of lackeys would be entitled, by the actions of your own hand, to declare the status of "Unlawful Enemy Combatant" for… and convene a Military Commission to try… not John Walker Lindh, but George Walker Bush?

For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And doubtless, sir, all of them — as always — wrong.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/10/18/countdown-special-comment-death-of-habeas-corpus-your-words-are-lies-sir/

This guy just continues to surprise me with his insight. I couldn't begin to have said it better myself.

[chrisd]

you really think you're gonna get a girl in bed with two words of latin?

[sam i am]

First of all : glad chrisd is gone.

Secondly : "Habeas Corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow." : talk about ludicrous.

I'd like to see anybody on this board explain how that quote relates to reality.

Finally : IF I were pulled off the street and declared an illegal alien, the government better take everyone I know and do the same. This is a classic strawman argument, where you ATTEMPT to scare American citizens, who have access to lawyers and family and friends and provable records of their backgrounds, and INTIMIDATE them with falsity.

Good luck with the scare tactics, oh ye who espouse this as some kind of monstrous undertaking - you're barking up the wrong tree.

[cosmo105]

yeah, this whole thing is pretty disgusting. i just don't see where they get off forgetting, you know, the whole bill of rights thing.

[sam i am]

yeah, this whole thing is pretty disgusting. i just don't see where they get off forgetting, you know, the whole bill of rights thing.

Who needs a bill of rights, anyway?:eek: :D










Most "liberal" countries around the world don't have one, so why should the US?

[Bob]

First of all : glad chrisd is gone.

Secondly : "Habeas Corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow." : talk about ludicrous.

I'd like to see anybody on this board explain how that quote relates to reality.

if i had to try, i'd say the idea is, "why have rights if you don't have the right to protect them?"

let's role play:

i'm the government, i've just arrested you and thrown you in jail. i haven't told your family or friends, they don't know where you are, nobody does. your turn

[Schmeltz]

I guess James Madison was barking up the wrong tree too. (http://www.thetalentshow.org/images/SilentEncroachments.jpg)