posted September 30, 2006 03:15 AM
CONGRESS, BUSH SUSPEND HABEAS CORPUS American Dictatorship Begins
Posted By: billym
I don't know what to say. Yesterday we officially entered the New American Dictatorship.
Here are two articles which lay out the frightening seriousness of the situation.
Read them and weep.
==========================================================================
In Case I Disappear
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 29 September 2006
I have been told a thousand times at least, in the years I have spent reporting on the astonishing and repugnant abuses, lies and failures of the Bush administration, to watch my back.
"Be careful," people always tell me.
"These people are capable of anything.
Stay off small planes, make sure you aren't being followed."
A running joke between my mother and me is that she has a "safe room" set up for me in her cabin in the woods, in the event I have to flee because of something I wrote or said.
I always laughed and shook my head whenever I heard this stuff.
Extreme paranoia wrapped in the tinfoil of conspiracy, I thought.
This is still America, and these Bush fools will soon pass into history, I thought.
I am a citizen, and the First Amendment hasn't yet been red-lined, I thought.
Matters are different now.
It seems, perhaps, that the people who warned me were not so paranoid.
It seems, perhaps, that I was not paranoid enough.
Legislation passed by the Republican House and Senate, legislation now marching up to the Republican White House for signature, has shattered a number of bedrock legal protections for suspects, prisoners, and pretty much anyone else George W. Bush deems to be an enemy.
So much of this legislation is wretched on the surface.
Habeas corpus has been suspended for detainees suspected of terrorism or of aiding terrorism, so the Magna Carta-era rule that a person can face his accusers is now gone!
Once a suspect has been thrown into prison, he does not have the right to a trial by his peers.
Suspects cannot even stand in representation of themselves, another ancient protection, but must accept a military lawyer as their defender.
Illegally-obtained evidence can be used against suspects, whether that illegal evidence was gathered abroad or right here at home.
To my way of thinking, this pretty much eradicates our security in persons, houses, papers, and effects, as stated in the Fourth Amendment, against illegal searches and seizures.
Speaking of collecting evidence, the torture of suspects and detainees has been broadly protected by this new legislation.
While it tries to delineate what is and is not acceptable treatment of detainees, in the end, it gives George W. Bush the final word on what constitutes torture.
US officials who use cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment to extract information from detainees are now shielded from prosecution.
It was two Supreme Court decisions, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that compelled the creation of this legislation.
The Hamdi decision held that a prisoner has the right of habeas corpus, and can challenge his detention before an impartial judge.
The Hamdan decision held that the military commissions set up to try detainees, violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions.
In short, the Supreme Court wiped out virtually every legal argument the Bush administration put forth to defend its extraordinary and dangerous behavior!!!
The passage of this legislation came after a scramble by Republicans to paper over the torture and murder of a number of detainees.
As columnist Molly Ivins wrote on Wednesday, "Of the over 700 prisoners sent to Gitmo, only 10 have ever been formally charged with anything.
Among other things, this bill is a CYA for torture of the innocent that has already taken place."
It seems almost certain that, at some point, the Supreme Court will hear a case to challenge the legality of this legislation, but even this is questionable.
If a detainee is not allowed access to a fair trial or to the evidence against him, how can he bring a legal challenge to a court?
The legislation, in anticipation of court challenges like Hamdi and Hamdan, even includes severe restrictions on judicial review over the legislation itself.
The Republicans in Congress have managed, at the behest of Mr. Bush, to draft a bill that all but erases the judicial branch of the government.
Time will tell whether this aspect, along with all the others, will withstand legal challenges.
If such a challenge comes, it will take time, and meanwhile there is this bill.
All of the above is deplorable on its face, indefensible in a nation that prides itself on Constitutional rights, protections and the rule of law.
Underneath all this, however, is where the paranoia sets in.
Underneath all this is the definition of "enemy combatant" that has been established by this legislation.
An "enemy combatant" is now no longer just someone captured "during an armed conflict" against our forces.
Thanks to this legislation, George W. Bush is now able to designate as an "enemy combatant" anyone who has "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States."
Consider that language a moment.
"Purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" is in the eye of the beholder, and this administration has proven itself to be astonishingly impatient with criticism of any kind. 
The broad powers given to Bush by this legislation allow him to capture, indefinitely detain, and refuse a hearing to any American citizen who speaks out against Iraq or any other part of the so-called "War on Terror."
If you write a letter to the editor attacking Bush, you could be deemed as purposefully and materially supporting hostilities against the United States.
If you organize or join a public demonstration against Iraq, or against the administration, the same designation could befall you.
One dark-comedy aspect of the legislation is that senators or House members who publicly disagree with Bush, criticize him, or organize investigations into his dealings could be placed under the same designation.
In effect, Congress just gave Bush the power to lock them up. :jawdrop"
By writing this essay, I could be deemed an "enemy combatant."
It's that simple, and very soon, it will be the law.
I always laughed when people told me to be careful.
I'm not laughing anymore.
In case I disappear, remember this.
America is an idea, a dream, and that is all.
We have borders and armies and citizens and commerce and industry, but all this merely makes us like every other nation on this Earth.
What separates us is the idea, the simple idea, that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are our organizing principles.
We can think as we please, speak as we please, write as we please, worship as we please, go where we please.
We are protected from the kinds of tyranny that inspired our creation as a nation in the first place.
That was the idea.
That was the dream.
It may all be over now, but once upon a time, it existed.
No good idea ever truly dies.
The dream was here, and so was I, and so were you.
==========================================================================
Many Rights in US Legal System Absent in New Bill
By R. Jeffrey Smith
The Washington Post
Friday 29 September 2006
The military trials bill approved by Congress lends legislative support for the first time to broad rules for the detention, interrogation, prosecution and trials of terrorism suspects far different from those in the familiar American criminal justice system.
President Bush's argument that the government requires extraordinary power to respond to the unusual threat of terrorism helped him win final support for a system of military trials with highly truncated defendant's rights.
The United States used similar trials on just four occasions: during the country's revolution, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and World War II.
Included in the bill, passed by Republican majorities in the Senate yesterday and the House on Wednesday, are unique rules that bar terrorism suspects from challenging their detention or treatment through traditional habeas corpus petitions.
They allow prosecutors, under certain conditions, to use evidence collected through hearsay or coercion to seek criminal convictions.
The bill rejects the right to a speedy trial and limits the traditional right to self-representation by requiring that defendants accept military defense attorneys.
Panels of military officers need not reach unanimous agreement to win convictions, except in death penalty cases, and appeals must go through a second military panel before reaching a federal civilian court.
By writing into law for the first time the definition of an "unlawful enemy combatant," the bill empowers the executive branch to detain indefinitely ANYONE it determines to have "purposefully and materially" supported anti-U.S. hostilities.
Only foreign nationals among those detainees can be tried by the military commissions, as they are known, and sentenced to decades in jail or put to death.
At the same time, the bill immunizes U.S. officials from prosecution for cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees who the military and the CIA captured before the end of last year.
It gives the president a dominant but not exclusive role in setting the rules for future interrogations of terrorism suspects.
Written largely, but not completely, on the administration's terms, with passages that give executive branch officials discretion to set details or divert from its protections, the bill is meant to provide what Bush said yesterday are "the tools" needed to handle terrorism suspects U.S. officials hope to capture.
For more than 57 months after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush maintained that he did not need congressional authorization of such tools.
But the Supreme Court decided otherwise in June, declaring the administration's detainee treatment and trial procedures illegal, and ruling that Bush must first seek Congress's approval.
Now Bush has received much of the authority he desired from party loyalists and a handful of Democrats on Capitol Hill.
"The American people need to know we're working together," Bush told senators before yesterday's vote.
But Tom Malinowski, the Washington office director for Human Rights Watch, said Bush's motivation is partly to protect his reputation by gaining congressional endorsement of controversial actions already taken.
"He's been accused of authorizing criminal torture in a way that has hurt America and could come back to haunt our troops.
One of his purposes is to have Congress stand with him in the dock," Malinowski said.
The bill contains some protections unavailable to the eight Nazi saboteurs who came ashore in the United States in 1942 and were captured two weeks later.
Six were executed that year after a closed military trial on the fifth floor of Justice Department headquarters.
That proceeding was upheld by the Supreme Court in a decision it explained two months after the electrocutions.
Under the new procedures, trials are supposed to be open, but can be closed to protect the security of individuals or information expected to harm national security.
Defendants have a right to be present, unless they are disruptive, and a right to examine and respond to the evidence against them.
Proof of guilt must exceed a reasonable doubt.
Many constitutional experts say, however, that the bill pushes at the edges of so much settled U.S. law that its passage will not be the last word on America's detainee policies.
They predict it will shift the public debate to the federal courts, a forum where the administration has had less success getting its way on counterterrorism policies.
"This is a full-employment act for lawyers," said Deborah Perlstein, who directs the U.S. Law and Security Program at the New York-based nonprofit group Human Rights First.
Former White House associate counsel Bradford A. Berenson, a supporter of the bill and one of the authors of the rules struck down by the Supreme Court, agreed. "Some of the most creative legal minds are going to be devoted to poking holes in this," he said.
Anticipating court challenges, the administration attempted to make the bill bulletproof by including provisions that would sharply restrict judicial review and limit the application of international treaties - signed by Washington - that govern the rights of wartime detainees.
The bill also contains blunt assertions that it complies with U.S. treaty obligations.
University of Texas constitutional law professor Sanford V. Levinson described the bill in an Internet posting as the mark of a "banana republic."
Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh said that "the image of Congress rushing to strip jurisdiction from the courts in response to a politically created emergency is really quite shocking, and it's not clear that most of the members understand what they've done."
In contrast, Douglas W. Kmiec, a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University, said Congress "did reasonably well in terms of fashioning a fair" set of procedures.
But Kmiec and many others say they cannot predict how the Supreme Court will respond to the provision barring habeas corpus rights, which he said will leave "a large body of detainees with no conceivable basis to challenge their detentions."
Lindaland
UBBFriend: Email This Page to Someone! 
posted September 30, 2006 03:15 AM
posted September 30, 2006 07:55 AM