Current mood:	worried
Entry tags:	civil rights, habeas corpus, judiciary

'i have a bad feeling about this'
it's S.3930. it's bad. New York Liberal summarizes:

If it becomes law, this legislation will:

• Create a secret committee appointed by Bush and Rumsfeld that has the power to declare any person, even a US citizen, to be an enemy, instantly depriving them of their legal rights
• Revoke habeas corpus
• Allow police to search your home without a search warrant
• Revoke protection of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions
• Give prior amnesty to war criminals
• Give George W Bush amnesty for any war crimes he has committed
• Allow for people to be put on trial in front of a kangaroo court military tribunal -- even if they aren’t in any military, and have not engaged in military attacks against the USA
• Allow the government to convict people of crimes on the basis of secret evidence that the accused never sees
• Make it legal for the government to use testimony extracted through torture
• End the legal right to be protected from forced self-incrimination
• Allow the government to imprison people without telling them what crimes they are being charged with
• Remove the right of the accused to cross-examine witnesses
• Allow for the records of trials to be kept secret from the American public
• Enable trials to begin even before a thorough investigation of the alleged crime has taken place
• Take away the right to a speedy trial

even granted that New York Liberal, like many political blogs, has a flair for the dramatic, i don't want such a thing passed unless someone can explain to me slowly and carefully why a U.S. executive can't simply declare random people "enemies" and use it to imprison them. i need something a bit more than "Trust me". worrisome, too, is noises about it i've heard that it will never be subjected to judicial review. i kind of doubt that, but i don't know what's in this thing.

update 20060928 1254 EDT: Section 950g of the proposed legislation gives the judiciary some ability to review. so, if they find it as offensive to common law as i do, they may overturn it. maybe that's what McCain, Graham, and Warner were after, really. dunno.

update 20060928 1624 EDT: there is an update on the progress of this thing.

update 20060928 1823 EDT: more on the response of the Democrats to this monstrosity.

update 20060928 1941 EDT: and many military folks ain't happy about it. can ya blame 'em? they're the ones who get captured and imprisoned from battle. and honor means a lot to most of them.

update 20060928 1945 EDT: FLASH it's over. the measure passed.



update 20060928 2048 EDT: it's a sad, dark day. those voting for the measure deserve the "grim reaper" attribution above. but the adjective also applies to the American public who have just sacrificed essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety. the quote

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

is widely attributed to Benjamin Franklin, although he at one point denied coining it. he did write, in Poor Richard's Almanac,

Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.

there is another anecdote which pertains:

At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, a Mrs. Powel anxiously awaited the results, and as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the long task now finished, asked him directly: "Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" "A republic if you can keep it" responded Franklin.

we have just taken a huge step towards losing it, something not only Franklin but Abraham Lincoln warned against.

and the electorate doesn't even know.

update 20060928 2124 EDT: really bad: an attorney posting an answer to a question i had about this suggests that it well may strip the authority of the Supreme Court to review this legislation for constitutionality.