An Attorney Looks at the Republican Law

Blog Note: Earlier, I posted a warning “You Will be Locked UP.” Here is an excellent summary of the key points of the Republican Bill/Agenda as posted on ZNET recently. You may find their site, http://www,zmag.org very helpful in obtaining information not available through corporate media.

Charles

*ZNet | Terror War*

*Rounding Up U.S. Citizens*

*by Marjorie Cohn; Portside; October 04, 2006*

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of

detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the

Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone

noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but

also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."

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.

The bill also strips habeas corpus rights from detained aliens

who have been declared enemy combatants.

Congress has the constitutional power to suspend habeas corpus

only in times of rebellion or invasion. The habeas-stripping

provision in the new bill is unconstitutional and the Supreme

Court will likely say so when the issue comes before it.

Although more insidious, this law follows in the footsteps of

other unnecessarily repressive legislation. In times of war and

national crisis, the government has targeted immigrants and

dissidents.

In 1798, the Federalist-led Congress, capitalizing on the fear

of war, passed the four Alien and Sedition Acts to stifle

dissent against the Federalist Party's political agenda. The

Naturalization Act extended the time necessary for immigrants to

reside in the U.S.

because most immigrants sympathized with the Republicans.

The Alien Enemies Act provided for the arrest, detention and

deportation of male citizens of any foreign nation at war with

the United States. Many of the 25,000 French citizens living in

the U.S. could have been expelled had France and America gone to

war, but this law was never used. The Alien Friends Act

authorized the deportation of any non-citizen suspected of

endangering the security of the U.S. government; the law lasted

only two years and no one was deported under it.

The Sedition Act provided criminal penalties for any person who

wrote, printed, published, or spoke anything "false, scandalous

and malicious" with the intent to hold the government in

"contempt or disrepute." The Federalists argued it was necessary

to suppress criticism of the government in time of war. The

Republicans objected that the Sedition Act violated the First

Amendment, which had become part of the Constitution seven years

earlier. Employed exclusively against Republicans, the Sedition

Act was used to target congressmen and newspaper editors who

criticized President John Adams.

Subsequent examples of laws passed and actions taken as a result

of fear-mongering during periods of xenophobia are the Espionage

Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Red Scare following

World War I, the forcible internment of people of Japanese

descent during World War II, and the Alien Registration Act of

1940 (the Smith Act).

During the McCarthy period of the 1950s, in an effort to

eradicate the perceived threat of communism, the government

engaged in widespread illegal surveillance to threaten and

silence anyone who had an unorthodox political viewpoint. Many

people were jailed, blacklisted and lost their jobs. Thousands

of lives were shattered as the FBI engaged in "red-baiting."

One month after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,

United States Attorney General John Ashcroft rushed the U.S.A.

Patriot Act through a timid Congress.

The Patriot Act created a crime of domestic terrorism aimed at

political activists who protest government policies, and set

forth an ideological test for entry into the United States.

In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the internment

of Japanese and Japanese-American citizens in Korematsu v.

United States. Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent that

the ruling would "lie about like a loaded weapon ready for the

hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim

of an urgent need."

That day has come with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It

provides the basis for the President to round- up both aliens

and U.S. citizens he determines have given material support to

terrorists. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Cheney's

Halliburton, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed

location to hold tens of thousands of undesirables.

In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Louis

Brandeis cautioned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in

insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without

understanding." Seventy- three years later, former White House

spokesman Ari Fleischer, speaking for a zealous President,

warned Americans "they need to watch what they say, watch what

they do."

We can expect Bush to continue to exploit 9/11 to strip us of

more of our liberties. Our constitutional right to dissent is in

serious jeopardy. Benjamin Franklin's prescient warning should

give us pause: "They who would give up an essential liberty for

temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

-----------------------

Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, is

president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S.

representative to the executive committee of the American

Association of Jurists. Her new book, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways

the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, will be published in 2007 by

PoliPointPress.