Bullypulpit
Senior Member
Since Rep. Mark Foley's (R-FL) hit the media on Friday, most everything eles has disappeared from the political radar scope. And one thing should not be forgotten...the Military Commissions Bill, S3930, passed by the Senate on September 28th.
The so called "rebellion" led by Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsay Graham was a sham. It was nothing more than a piece of politcal kabuki designed to give this odious piece of legislation a whiff of legitimacy.
Let's review just what this piece of legislation does..
It re-establishes President Bush's military tribunals, which were rejected by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
It shields from prosecution those individuals who violated both US and international law throught their use of interrogation techniques held to be torture before December 30, 2005.
It prevents any person harmed by the U.S., in violation of the Geneva Conventions, from filing a claim in U.S. court.
It strips legal residents of the U.S. of their right to challenge their detention in court if they're accused of being enemy combatants.
It abolishes the right of Guantanamo detainees to challenge their detention, which in effect pre-judges all of them as guilty.
It approves the CIA program that allows waterboarding and other forms of torture.
It gives the president the power to name any individual, including citizens, as an unlawful enemy combatant if they provide material support". Just what constitutes such support remains undefined.
Given the overly broad definitions of "enemy combatant" that the Administration clings to, anyone who opposes the administration could, at some point, be deemed an "enemy combatant". It must also be noted that this bill effectively undercuts the right of <i>habeas corpus</i> not only for the GITMO detainees, but also for US citizens how might be caught up in its overly broad net. More than 900 years of legal precedent thrown on the trash heap in the pursuit of power. ANd with <i>habeas corpus</i> not just suspeneded, but done away with entirely, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights aren't worth the match it would take to burn them.
Once Chimpy signs this misbegotten, un-Constitutional and un-American piece of legislation into law, and he will, the executive branch will have unprecedented powers which it may exercise with no oversight from Congress. An history has shown us, repeatedly, that once governments gain such power, they waste no time in abusing it it. Given this Administration's well documented track record of abuses of power and its utter disdain for the rule of law, it will waste no time in abusing these powers.
<blockquote>"I would rather be exposed to the inconvenience attending too much Liberty than those attending too small degree of it." -Thomas Jefferson
"The Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume." Thomas Jefferson to A. H. Rowan, 1798. ME 10:61
Of one thing we may be sure. The future will never have to ask, with misgiving, what could the Nazis have said in their favor. History will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. They have been given the kind of a trial, which they, in the days of their pomp and power, never gave to any man.
But fairness is not weakness. The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute of our strength. -Nuremburg lawyer Robert Jackson </blockquote>
The so called "rebellion" led by Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsay Graham was a sham. It was nothing more than a piece of politcal kabuki designed to give this odious piece of legislation a whiff of legitimacy.
Let's review just what this piece of legislation does..
It re-establishes President Bush's military tribunals, which were rejected by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
It shields from prosecution those individuals who violated both US and international law throught their use of interrogation techniques held to be torture before December 30, 2005.
It prevents any person harmed by the U.S., in violation of the Geneva Conventions, from filing a claim in U.S. court.
It strips legal residents of the U.S. of their right to challenge their detention in court if they're accused of being enemy combatants.
It abolishes the right of Guantanamo detainees to challenge their detention, which in effect pre-judges all of them as guilty.
It approves the CIA program that allows waterboarding and other forms of torture.
It gives the president the power to name any individual, including citizens, as an unlawful enemy combatant if they provide material support". Just what constitutes such support remains undefined.
Given the overly broad definitions of "enemy combatant" that the Administration clings to, anyone who opposes the administration could, at some point, be deemed an "enemy combatant". It must also be noted that this bill effectively undercuts the right of <i>habeas corpus</i> not only for the GITMO detainees, but also for US citizens how might be caught up in its overly broad net. More than 900 years of legal precedent thrown on the trash heap in the pursuit of power. ANd with <i>habeas corpus</i> not just suspeneded, but done away with entirely, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights aren't worth the match it would take to burn them.
Once Chimpy signs this misbegotten, un-Constitutional and un-American piece of legislation into law, and he will, the executive branch will have unprecedented powers which it may exercise with no oversight from Congress. An history has shown us, repeatedly, that once governments gain such power, they waste no time in abusing it it. Given this Administration's well documented track record of abuses of power and its utter disdain for the rule of law, it will waste no time in abusing these powers.
<blockquote>"I would rather be exposed to the inconvenience attending too much Liberty than those attending too small degree of it." -Thomas Jefferson
"The Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume." Thomas Jefferson to A. H. Rowan, 1798. ME 10:61
Of one thing we may be sure. The future will never have to ask, with misgiving, what could the Nazis have said in their favor. History will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. They have been given the kind of a trial, which they, in the days of their pomp and power, never gave to any man.
But fairness is not weakness. The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute of our strength. -Nuremburg lawyer Robert Jackson </blockquote>
