Fwd: [ cacklinggrackle] The day democracy died

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T. Lassiter Jones <ljonez23

Oct 1, 2006 2:01 PM

[cacklinggrackle] The day democracy died

grackle <cacklinggrackle >

 

http://www.reformer.com/editorials/ci_4422455

 

Sept. 28, 2006, will be a day that will live in infamy in American history.

 

On Thursday, the Republican-controlled Senate, aided by a handful of

faithless, fearful Democrats, decided it was more important to win an

election than to preserve and protect the Constitution, human rights

and the rule of law.

 

The Senate voted 65-34 to scrap nearly eight centuries of legal

precedent in voting for a bill that gives President Bush unimaginably

broad powers regarding the detention, interrogation, prosecution and

trials of terrorism suspects.

 

How broad? For starters, suspects will not have the right to challenge

their detention in a court of law. This, known as the writ of habeas

corpus, was established in the Magna Carta in 1215 and has been the

bedrock of the rule of law ever since.

 

A suspect will also not be able to challenge their treatment while in

detention in a court of law. The right to a speedy trial has been

eliminated, as has the right of the accused to see the evidence and

testimony against him. Coerced evidence is now permissible for use in

a trial, if a judge considers that evidence reliable.

 

This bill not only immunizes U.S. officials from prosecution for

cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners, it also allows

the president to set the rules for interrogation and determine what

constitutes cruel and inhumane treatment and what interrogation

tactics it considers permissible. And there is no requirement for the

American people to know any this information -- it may stay secret

indefinitely.

 

If you think all this only applies to foreign terrorists sitting in

cells in Guantanamo Bay, you're wrong. The language in this bill gives

the president the power to seize anyone, U.S. citizen or foreign

national, who has " purposely and materially supported hostilities

against the United States. " It codifies the Bush administration's

definition of " unlawful enemy combatant, " a definition that previously

did not exist in any law book.

 

What does this mean? If you write to this newspaper's Letter Box

criticizing President Bush, if you stand in front of the post office

protesting the war in Iraq, if you send a contribution to a charity or

political group that is deemed to be " aiding terrorism, " you too could

be deemed an " unlawful enemy combatant " and whisked away and jailed

without legal recourse.

 

Sounds improbable? Think something like this can't happen in America?

Ask the Japanese-Americans who were rounded up and detained in prison

camps during World War II, guilty of no crime other than being of

Japanese ancestry. There have been too many instances in our nation's

history when fear has led to gross violations of civil liberties.

 

To their credit, our senators, Patrick Leahy and James Jeffords, voted

against this bill. History will not judge kindly on the 65 senators

who voted to trash centuries of democratic principles and the rule of

law for political gain.

 

The Republicans claim this law needed to be enacted quickly so this

nation can effectively fight the war on terror. It is a lie. The

hundreds of prisoners in Guantanamo and other prisons around the world

will continue to be held until the Bush administration figures out a

way to handle their cases that passed legal muster. There is no need

to rush.

 

But the Republicans wanted to rush. They wanted to have a law they

could use against Democrats in the November mid-term elections. And

too many Democrats were afraid of the political attacks that would

come if they voted against this bill.

 

Leahy was not afraid. " Now is not the time to abandon American values,

to shiver and quake, to rely on secrecy and torture, " he said. " Those

are ways of repression and oppression, not the American way. "

 

We agree. President Bush will soon sign this bill into law and talk

about how the provisions it contains will make us safer. That too, is

a lie. All it will do is tell the world that for all the talk of

spreading freedom and democracy around the globe, the United States

really stands for repression and the arbitrary abuse of power.

 

We hope the federal courts will overturn this law, but even this is

questionable. If a detainee under this legislation no longer has the

right to a fair trial or to hear the evidence against him, how can he

bring a legal challenge to court? This legislation even contains

restrictions on judicial review of its provisions.

 

The American ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit or happiness, of

equal protection under the law, of having the freedom to say, write,

think and worship as we please, of being secure in our homes and being

free from illegal searches and seizures -- all this is now under

attack, not by an external enemy, but an internal one. And we will

only have ourselves to blame if the nightmares contained in this

odious legislation become reality.