haebeus corpus

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.

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.

Contemporary Awareness

Contemporary Awareness

PORNOGRAPHY, PEDERASTY, AND POLITICS

If you would like the complete article, please click on link below the introduction.

PORNOGRAPHY, PEDERASTY, AND POLITICS –

One of the by-laws of this site is that obscenity and sexual deviance not be posted, but I do want to write something about recent events and the Republican Party. I’ll try not to use four-letter words – maybe that will be OK.

The Republican (Mark Foley) who led the passage of a bill to prosecute pedophiles using the internet has been, er, exposed for writing salacious messages through electronic means to Pages in Congress, young males, about 16 years old. Not only “What are you wearing?” “Do you find me sexy?” but “I would like to have you naked and grab your penis,” or something like that. He resigned as a result, recently saying through his attorney “I was molested by a clergyman between the ages of 13 and 15,” (him, not the clergyman). Oh yes, he is now in treatment for alcoholism and can’t be reached. Of course, he is responsible for his actions, whether drunk or not.

We have already discussed the statements of the son of an ex-football coach and “Mukaka,” so let’s move on.

Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House and thus third in line to the Presidency, an ex-wrestling coach, apparently knew about this at least a year ago but hushed it up to help Republican maintain control of congress. Now many think he should resign, but why not simply vote him out of office as well? Besides, he is very overweight and has trouble seeing.

Shakespeare has a line for these “Family Values” “God Fearing” types: “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

By the way, I have several medals for wrestling, but I am not likely to be President, ever.

charles

Faith-Based Administration

On Faith-Based Oppression: Untimely Ruminations

N.B.: “Mukaka:” – a word used by an incumbent Republican Senator and Republican Presidential Hopeful for 2008 to describe a person of color. He claims it is “just made up,” and means nothing in particular. His main credential is that he is the son of a football coach. Linguists indicate that it is a derisive term for a human being, meaning some sort of monkey. I’m with the football coach.

Introduction:

I wrote the following out of an attempt to understand the current administration. My chief concern or question is whether this administration, and the Chief Executive in particular, is simply moronic or deliberately lying. I have no difficulty in understanding and even accepting a so-called corrupt, scheming, power-hungry, slime ball politician so long as the garbage is picked up and the street shoveled. This, no doubt, comes from my early, formative years in Chicago and understanding of its Politics. What confuses me is when a politician asserts and acts in a manner clearly against the best interests of his citizens but who actually believes that he is doing God’s work. I have no problem understanding a Caesar Borgia[1], but George Bush still puzzles me. The following ruminations are designed to come to terms with this genuine bewilderment.

1

We have all heard the President, or Mukaka in chief, talk about “faith-based” “initiatives” and it hasn’t been very difficult to realize that he meant vouchers for religious schools, Christian denomitated charities replacing government entitlements, and the destruction of all “New Deal” reforms, etc. It has not been clear, however, that EVERYTHING in the administration is faith-based.

2

For example, we have a faith-based foreign policy. It is not really Xtian V. Moslem that is the defining element. It is the decision to do what they feel they want to do and then to find facts to back it up. In this sense, it goes one step past religion, which admits all of its chief tenets, such as the existence of a Monotheistic God, can not be proved but merely accepted. Instead, it claims absolute proof based on facts. Any facts that contradict the decision are disregarded, discarded, or the presenters of them attacked. If the facts refuse to go away, they are then “interpreted.”

3

The decision to attack Iraq and its sovereign government was made to install permanent military bases in the Mid-East in order to control the oil supply. This would stabilize or increase profits for the oil companies and give the U.S. leverage against China and other states so they would do our bidding. The major error made by Saddam was in setting a good example; that is, by providing universal health care, giving women full rights, and, above all, putting Iraq’s interests before those of the corporations in the United States. The invasion of Kuwait is still a murky subject – did we encourage that in order to have a valid pretext? Has anybody heard from April Gillespie lately?

But we needed facts with Bush 2 to support the invasion and make it “the right thing to do.” Ahmed Chalabi gave them to our administration: Saddam had weapons of mass-destruction, was a Hitler, the people would be glad we invaded them, and it wouldn’t cost us a cent as they had oil. Everyone else, especially those who knew better, was silenced to varying degrees and by whatever methods possible. Since the same corporate structure that owned the government owned the media, the citizens of the U.S. were pretty much fed Chalabi inspired lies. Idiological underpinnings were supplied by such “neo-conservatives” and Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Pearl.

When the lies were uncovered and proved false, the rationale for attacking and occupying Iraq became a love of democracy and making the world a better place. And so on.

4

War on Terror: It would be nice if there were no more terror in the world, let us all agree on that.

Much has been made of Iraq’s importance in the war of/on “terror”. The facts are fairly obvious: No one hated Saddam more than Bin Laden and the hatred was mutual. If it is true, as I have been told by our media and heard elsewhere, that Saddam was Psychotically Narcissistic (scale 9 on the MMPI), he would not tolerate any activity that suggested to him how to do anything, especially if a God were invoked for that purpose.

Now it has become clear that the war on Iraq increased the danger of terrorism, the administration released and declassified a document that stated exactly that – BUT THEY THOUGHT THAT IT EXHONERATED THEM! We are safer today, they say, see? And hold up a NIE report that says terrorism increased as a result of our “premptive war” in Iraq, and one of the proofs is that we are fighting what we call terrorists there, not here, while at the same time talking about many terrorist threats averted here! Furthermore, they seem to believe it. Stay the course (as did the Titanic).

It should be added here that, if we really wanted to stop suicide bombing in Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank, we could do it by supplying the Palestinians with the same weapons the Israelis have.2

5

Voting: It is clear that anyone voting for this insanity is incapable of reason. They must intend to vote based on faith. In what? I don’t know. Faith that stem-cells are living beings? (I have been fond of saying that if God had wanted us to have stem cells, we would have been born with them.) I suppose the faith is that reality is as our administration interprets it and that if you do not vote for them, terror will get you. It is also well known and documented that those eligible to vote, but who don’t, realize that there is nothing for them in it no matter who wins.

6

Tax and Spend: It is generally believed that Democrats are “tax and spend liberals”. This makes voters believe that they will cost them money. The facts indicate quite the opposite. When Bill Clinton (fact: Democrat) left office, he left billions of dollars of surplus funds. Georgie Bush (fact: Republican) has taxed and spent to where we have a deficit approaching trillions. One has to use faith to vote for a Republican congress on this issue.

7

Soft on Terrorism: The faith holds that Republicans are more macho on this. The fact is that more action has been taken against so-called “terrorists” by Democrats, even though “the resistance” might be a better term for them. A recent interview between Chris Wallace and Bill Clinton made this fairly clear.

8

Spreading Democracy: The commonly held belief in this country is that it is a democracy while it is, in reality, Crypto-Fascist. To keep up the ARREARANCE of democracy, elections are held (between candidates whose policies differ little), and many speeches are carried on our mass media to that effect. The recent passage of a bill allowing the governments to seize you, lock you up, and never charge you, in other words eliminate due process, is just another case in point. The Constitution is a document made possible by the great Cognitive Revolution of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, Descartes and those guys, invoking facts, logic, and reason. Our century has managed to ossify that basis and replace it with faith.

9

Faith Defined: The definition was attributed to Jesus. Once, after reportedly performing a “miracle” (suspension of the normal laws of natural science), his apostle Thomas said “Ah, now I believe, thou are God,” (or something like that). The response was “Thou believest because thou hast seen. Blessed are those who believe and yet have not seen.” In other words, remain blind to the facts and still believe the drivel said to you – that’s faith.

10

Insanity or Denial: Fact: there is an attack on U.S. forces or bases every 15 minutes in Iraq and the people of Iraq clearly want us out of there. The war is every bit if not more unpopular in the U.S. than was Vietnam near the end. We will be forced to “cut and run” in scenes reminiscent of the helicopters leaving the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon (now, Ho Chi Min City). Who can forget Ken Kashiwahara, an ABC reporter, just barely surviving?

However, while the fact may be acknowledged, it is interpreted as a sign of our success. This is very characteristic of paranoid schizophrenia. Let me give a couple examples: I once had a patient who was convinced that he was Jesus. The policies of the institution did not allow me to undertake a “cure,” but I was expected to manage his behavior. To do so, one ought never to challenge the first premise or hypothesis the patient holds and this is a mistake many therapists make. For someone with this illness, everything will be logical so long as it accords with the first premise. So, when this patient started to disturb the other patients by demanding that they act like disciples and pray with him, or to him, it was my task to stop him (although the command came more as “let him know he’s not Jesus or fooling anyone”). Such is the state of clinical psychology in our society. Now Jesus is quoted extensively in the New Testament saying many things, so it is possible to support almost any argument by finding an appropriate quote, and this I did (fact: most Xtians have not read the Bible with the same rigor a philologist would and few are aware of the multitude of various English translations alone). I then called him into my office, opened up the New Testament and asked him, after establishing he was them same Jesus, of course, “didn’t you say this? Why are you doing that?” Well, he read the passage, said, “Oh, yeah, I forgot, of course” and the proselytizing stopped. I was praised for the “cure.”

A more wide spread anecdote is the man who was convinced he was dead. In exasperation, the therapist asked, “Look, do dead men bleed?”

The man replied “No.”

The therapist immediately took out a small razor and cut him.

The patient looked down at his wrist in amazement and said, “My God, dead men DO bleed.”

In other words, all facts can be accepted so long as they do not contradict the first premise: God is leading the Mukaka in Chief in all his political actions, therefore they are correct. Any fact that contradicts this is subject to reinterpretation.

11

Consequences: The party that has the majority in the house and senate appoints the Chair of all legislative committees. At the present time, this is the same party as the President’s. So long as this continues, his policies will continue unchecked and his appointments to the Supreme Court will pass easily. After this election, no matter what the result, gasoline prices will increase rapidly and the actions will intensify as well as their consequences. They will only be checked or mitigated if another party and set of individuals becomes the majority

12

I invite commentary, response, suggestions, and revisions. I will leave this up for a few days, then continue posting other information, then repost this some time later. I hope to hear from you.

---

[1] He was a Renaissance Era Cardinal in the Catholic Church. He reputedly liked to fight tigers in the colleseum. Unlike present day leaders, his subjects feared he would assinate him, not vice versa. He wanted his Uncle to become Pope, but that required a 2/3 majority. Elections kept being held and other Cardinals kept dying until this was accomplished. At least, that is what I’ve been able to gather.

2 A better option would be to disarm the entire planet.

The New attack on the constitution

You will be locked up!

Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org

?A Total Rollback Of Everything This Country Has Stood For?: Sen.

Patrick Leahy Blasts Congressional Approval of Detainee Bill

Friday, September 29th, 2006

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/29/150254

The Senate has agreed to give President Bush extraordinary power to

detain and try prisoners in the so-called war on terror. The legislation

strips detainees of the right to challenge their own detention and gives

the President the power to detain them indefinitely. The bill also

immunizes U.S. officials from prosecution for torturing detainees who

the military and the CIA captured before the end of last year. We get

reaction from Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Michael Ratner of the

Center for Constitutional Rights. [includes rush transcript]

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

On Capitol Hill, the Senate has agreed to give President Bush

extraordinary power to detain and try prisoners in the so-called war on

terror. The editors of the New York Times described the law as

tyrannical. They said its passage marks a low point in American

democracy and that it is our generation?s version of the Alien and

Sedition Acts. The legislation strips detainees of the right to file

habeas corpus petitions to challenge their own detention or treatment.

It gives the president the power to indefinitely detain anyone it deems

to have provided material support to anti-U.S. hostilities. Secret and

coerced evidence could be used to try detainees held in U.S. military

prisons. The bill also immunizes U.S. officials from prosecution for

torturing detainees who the military and the CIA captured before the end

of last year.

The Senate passed the measure sixty five to thirty four. Twelve

Democrats joined the Republican majority. The House passed virtually the

same legislation on Wednesday. Legal groups, including the Center for

Constitutional Rights, are already preparing to challenge the

constitutionality of the law in court.

* * Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)*. Ranking member on the Senate

Judiciary Committee. See Senator Leahy?s statement on the detainee

bill here .

* * Michael Ratner*. President of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

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

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

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*AMY GOODMAN: *On Thursday, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont

condemned the legislation from the floor of the Senate.

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *It grieves me to think that three decades in

this body that I stand here in the Senate, knowing that we?re

thinking of doing this. It is so wrong. It is unconstitutional. It

is un-American. It is designed to ensure the Bush-Cheney

administration will never again be embarrassed by a United States

Supreme Court decision reviewing its unlawful abuses of power. The

Supreme Court said, ?You abused your power.? He said, ?Ha, we?ll

fix that. We have a rubber stamp, a rubber stamp, Congress, that

will just set that aside and give us power that nobody, no king or

anybody else set foot in this land, ever thought of having.?

*AMY GOODMAN: *Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy speaking Thursday prior

to the vote. He joins us now on the telephone. Welcome to /Democracy Now!/

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *Thank you. It?s good to be with you.

*AMY GOODMAN: *It?s good to have you with us, Senator. Now, if you could

explain exactly what this bill that the Senate has just approved with a

number of Democrats joining with the Republicans, what exactly it does.

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *First off, as you probably gathered from what I

was saying on the floor, it?s a terrible bill. It removes as many checks

and balances as possible so that any president can basically set the

law, determine what laws they?ll follow and what laws they?ll break and

not have anybody be able to question them on it.

In this case, the particular section I was speaking about at that point

was the so-called /habeas/ protection. Now, /habeas corpus/ was first

brought in the Magna Carta in the 1200s. It?s been a tenet of our rights

as Americans. And what they're saying is that if you?re an alien, even

if you?re in the United States legally, a legal alien, may have been

here ten years, fifteen years, twenty years legally, if a determination

is made by anybody in the executive that you may be a threat, they can

hold you indefinitely, they could put you in Guantanamo, not bring any

charges, not allow you to have a lawyer, not allow you to ever question

what they?ve done, even in cases, as they now acknowledge, where they

have large numbers of people in Guantanamo who are there by mistake,

that they put you -- say you?re a college professor who has written on

Islam or for whatever reason, and they lock you up. You?re not even

allowed to question it. You?re not allowed to have a lawyer, not allowed

to say, ?Wait a minute, you?ve got the wrong person. Or you?ve got --

the one you?re looking for, their name is spelled similar to mine, but

it?s not me.? It makes no difference. You have no recourse whatsoever.

This goes so much against everything we've ever done. Now, we?ve had

some on the other side say, ?Well, they're trying to give rights to

terrorists.? No, we?re just saying that the United States will follow

the rules it has before and will protect rights of people. We?re not

giving any new rights. We?re just saying that if, for example, if you

picked up the wrong person, you at least have a chance to get somebody

independent to make that judgment.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Senator Leahy, on this issue of /habeas corpus/, I want

to play a clip from yesterday?s Senate debate and have you respond. This

is Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

*SEN. JEFF SESSIONS: *It was never, ever, ever, ever intended or

imagined that during the War of 1812, that it British soldiers

were captured burning of the Capitol of the United States, as they

did, that they would have been given /habeas corpus/ rights. It

was never thought to be. /habeas corpus/ was applied to citizens,

really, at that time, and I believe that that?s so plain as to be

without dispute.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Republican Senator Jeff Sessions. Senator Leahy, your

response.

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *Well, I wish it was as plain as he says. Of

course, in the /Hamdan/ decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it

very clear that it is available in somebody captured. In a case like

what he was talking about, if somebody had been captured there and held

in prison, and they said, ?You have the wrong person,? they could at

least raise it. And you also have, of course, under the Constitution,

that /habeas/ can be suspended if there is an invasion, if there is an

insurrection. We have neither case here. Even the most conservative

Republican legal thinkers have said this is not a case to suspend

/habeas corpus/.

You know, they can set up all the straw men they want, but the fact is

this allows the Bush administration to act totally arbitrarily with no

court or anybody else to raise any questions about it. It allows them to

cover up any mistakes they make. And this goes beyond just marking

everything ?secret,? as they do now. Every mistake they make, they just

mark it ?secret.? But this is even worse. This means somebody could be

locked up for five years, ten years, fifteen years, twenty years. They

have the wrong person, and they have no rights to be able to say, ?Hey

guys, you?ve got the wrong person.? It goes against everything that

we?ve done as Americans.

You know, when things like this were done during the Cold War in some of

the Iron Curtain countries, I remember all the speeches on the Senate

floor, Democrats and Republicans alike saying, ?How horrible this is!

Thank God we don?t do things like this in America.? I wish they?d go

back and listen to some of their speeches at that time.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Senator Leahy, this was not a close vote: 65 to 34. The

twelve Democrats who joined with the Republicans, except for Senator

Chafee of Rhode Island, the twelve Democrats are Tom Carper of Delaware,

Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Frank

Lautenberg of New Jersey, as well as Senator Menendez of New Jersey,

Bill Nelson of Florida, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Senator Pryor of

Arkansas, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Ken Salazar of Colorado,

Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. They

joined with the Republicans. You are working very hard to get a

Democratic majority in the Senate in these next elections and in

Congress overall. What difference would it make?

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *In their defense, all but one of them voted with

me when we moved to strike the /habeas/ provisions out. That was the

Specter-Leahy amendment, and we had, I think it was, 51-48, I think, was

the final vote on that. All but one of the Democrats joined with me on

that. If we had gotten three or four more Republicans, we would have at

least struck out the /habeas/ provision. There are -- you know, I --

*AMY GOODMAN: *But they voted for this bill without that, with the

/habeas/ provision being stripped out.

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *I?ll let each one speak for themselves. The fact

that the Republicans were virtually lockstep in it, though, should be

what I would look at. And maybe we?re blessed in Vermont --

*AMY GOODMAN: *But that larger question, that larger question of, what

would be any different if Democrats were in power?

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *For one thing, we would have been asking the

questions about what?s been going on for six years. We?ve had a

rubberstamp congress that automatically has given the President anything

he wants, because nobody?s asked questions. Nobody?s asked the questions

that are in the Woodward book that?s coming out this weekend, where you

find all the mistakes were made because they will acknowledge no

mistakes. The Republicans control both the House and the Senate. They

will not call hearings. They won?t try to find out how did Halliburton

walk off with billions of dollars in cost overruns in Iraq. Why did the

Bush administration refuse to send the body armor our troops needed in

Iraq? Why did they send inferior material?

And, of course, the two questions that the Congress would not ask,

because the Republicans won?t allow it, is, why did 9/11 happen on

George Bush's watch when he had clear warnings that it was going to

happen? Why did they allow it to happen? And secondly, when they had

Osama bin Laden cornered, why didn?t they get him? Had there been an

independent congress, one that could ask questions, these questions

would have been asked years ago. We?d be much better off. We would have

had the answers to that. I think with those answers, we would not have

the fiasco we have in Iraq today, we would have caught Osama bin Laden,

Afghanistan would be a more stable place, and the world would be safer.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Was President Bush on Capitol Hill yesterday?

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *Oh, yes, indeed. You can always tell, because

virtually the whole city comes to a screeching halt with the motorcades,

although it?s sort of like that when Dick Cheney comes up to give orders

to the Republican Caucus. He comes up with a 15 to 25 vehicle caravan.

It?s amazing to watch.

*AMY GOODMAN: *And what was Bush doing yesterday on Capitol Hill?

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *Oh, he was just telling them they had to vote this

way. They had to vote. They couldn?t hand him a defeat. They had to go

with him They had to trust him. It?ll get us past the election. We had

offered a -- you know, five years ago, I and others had suggested there

is a way to have military tribunals for the detainees, where it would

meet all our standards and basic international standards. They rejected

that. And now, five weeks before the elections, they say, ?Oh, yes, we

need something like that.? No, basically what he was saying to them,

don?t ask questions, get us past the elections, because if you ask

questions, the answers are going to be embarrassing, and it could hurt

you in the elections.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Senator Leahy, we have to break for one minute. We ask

you to stay with us. We?ll also be joined by CCR president, Center for

Constitutional Rights president, Michael Ratner.

[break]

*AMY GOODMAN: *Our guests are Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy

and Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He is

president there. Michael Ratner, your response, as we speak with the

senator about this groundbreaking legislation?

*MICHAEL RATNER: *Well, I think Senator Leahy really got it right. I

mean, what this bill authorizes is really the authority of an

authoritarian despot to the president. I mean, what it gives him is the

power, as the senator said, to detain any person anywhere in the world,

citizen or non-citizen, whether living in the United States or anywhere

else. I mean, what kind of authority is that? No checks and balances.

Nothing. Now, if you?re a citizen, you still get your right of /habeas

corpus/. If you?re a non-citizen, as the senator pointed out, you?re

completely finished. Picked up, legal permanent resident in the United

States, detained forever, no writ of /habeas corpus/.

It was incredibly shocking. I watched that vote yesterday. I had been in

Washington for two or three days trying to line up the votes for Senator

Leahy?s amendment that would have restored /habeas/. We thought we had

them. We lost at 51 to 48. I have to tell you, Amy, I just -- I

basically broke down at that point. I had been working like a dog on

this thing. And there I saw the President come to Capitol Hill and

persuade two or three or four of the Republicans who we thought we had

to vote to strip /habeas corpus/ from this legislation. It was a shock.

I mean, an utter shock.

So you have this ability to detain anyone anywhere in the world. You

deny them the writ of /habeas corpus/. And when they're in detention,

you have a right to do all kinds of coercive techniques on them:

hooding, stripping, anything really the president says goes, short of

what he defines as torture. And then, if you are lucky enough to be

tried, and I say ?lucky enough,? because, for example, the 460 people

the Center represents at Guantanamo may never get trials. In fact, only

ten have even been charged. Those people, they?ve been stripped of their

right to go to court and test their detention by /habeas corpus/.

They?re just -- they?ve been there five years. Right now, under this

legislation, they could be there forever.

Let me tell you, this bill will be struck down and struck down badly.

But meanwhile, for two more years or whatever it?s going to take us to

litigate it, we?re going to be litigating what was a basic right, as the

senator said, since the Magna Carta of 1215, the right of any human

being to test their detention in court. It?s one of the saddest days

I?ve seen. You?ve called it ?groundbreaking,? Amy. It?s really

Constitution-breaking. It?s Constitution-shattering. It shatters really

basic rights that we've had for a very long time.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Senator Leahy, how long have you been a senator?

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *I?ve been there 32 years. I have to absolutely

agree with what I just heard. I mean, this is -- it?s Kafka. But it?s

more than that. It?s just a total rollback of everything this country

has stood for. I mean, you have 100 people, very privileged, members of

the Senate voting this way and with no realization of what it would be

like if you were the one who was picked up. Maybe you?re guilty, but

quite often, as we?ve seen, purely by accident and then held for years.

You know, I was a prosecutor for eight years. I prosecuted an awful lot

of people, sent a lot of people to prison. But I did it arguing that

everybody's rights had to be protected, because mistakes are often made.

You want to make sure that if you?re prosecuting somebody, you?re

prosecuting the right person. Here, they don't care whether mistakes are

made or not.

And you have to stand up. I mean, it was a Vermonter -- you go way back

in history -- it was a Vermonter who stood up against the Alien and

Sedition Act, Matthew Lyon. He was prosecuted on that, put in jail, as a

congressman, put in jail. And Vermont showed what they thought of these

unconstitutional laws. We in Vermont reelected him, and eventually the

laws fell down. There was another Vermonter, Ralph Flanders, who stood

up to Joseph McCarthy and his reign of fear and stopped that. I mean,

you have to stand. What has happened, here we are, a great powerful good

nation, and we?re running scared. We?re willing to set aside all our

values and running scared. What an example that is to the rest of the

world.

*AMY GOODMAN: *You gave an example, Senator Leahy, when you talked about

what would happen here. And, I mean, even the fact that ?/habeas

corpus/? is in Latin, I think, distances people. They don?t quite

understand what this is about.

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *?Bring the body.?

*AMY GOODMAN: *You gave a very -- sorry?

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *?Bring the body.?

*AMY GOODMAN: *You gave a very graphic example. You said, ?Imagine

you?re a law-abiding lawful permanent resident. In your spare time you

do charitable fundraising for international relief agencies that lend a

hand in disasters.? Take that story from there, the example you used.

*SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: *You send money. You don?t care which particular

religious group or civic group it is. They?re doing humanitarian work.

You send the money. It turns out that one of them is giving money to

various Islamic causes that the United States is concerned about. They

come to your house. Maybe somebody has called into one of these

anonymous tipster lines, saying, ?You know, this Amy Goodman. I?m

somewhat worried about her, simply because she?s going -- and I think

I?ve seen some Muslim-looking people coming to her house.? They come in

there, and they say, ?We want to talk to you.? They bring you downtown.

You?re a legal alien, legal resident here. And you say, ?Well, look,

I?ve got my rights. I?d like to talk to a lawyer.? They say, ?No, no.

You don?t have any rights.? ?Well, then I?m not going to talk to you.?

?Well, then now we?re twice as concerned about you. We?re going to

spirit you down to Guantanamo, and we?ll get back to in a few years.?

And, I mean, that could actually happen under this. And these are not

far-fetched ideas, as the professor knows. He?s seen similar things.

And with that, and I would love to continue this conversation,

unfortunately I?ve got to go back to my day job, back to the judiciary.

I think this is going to go down as one of those black marks in the

Congress. You know, I wasn?t there at the time, but virtually everybody

voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution. When I came to the Senate, you

couldn?t find anybody there who thought that was a good idea. They knew

it was a terrible mistake. You had members of congress supported the

internment of the Japanese Americans during World War II. Everybody

knows that was a terrible mistake now. That day will come when everybody

will look at this and say, ?What were we thinking??

*AMY GOODMAN: *Patrick Leahy, thanks very much for joining us. We only

have about 30 seconds. Michael Ratner, president of Center for

Constitutional Rights, your final comment on this.

*MICHAEL RATNER: *This was really, as the senator said, probably the

worst piece of legislation I?ve seen in my 40-year career as a lawyer.

The idea, and even the example Senator Leahy gave, of someone being

picked up, you don?t need anything. The President can decide tomorrow

that you, Amy, or me, or particularly a non-citizen, can be picked up,

put in jail forever, essentially, and if you're a non-citizen in

Guantanamo or anywhere else in the world, you never get a chance to go

to court to test your detention. It?s an incredible thing, and any

senator who voted for this, in my view, is essentially guilty, guilty,

guilty of undermining basic fundamental rights and may well be guilty of

war crimes, as well.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Michael Ratner, thanks very much for joining us,

president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

www.democracynow.org