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blaseblasphemener
Joined: 01 Jun 2006
Location: There's a voice, keeps on calling me, down the road, that's where I'll always be
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 Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 9:16 pm Post subject: Oldest law no-longer? |
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Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008
#1 No Habeas Corpus for �Any Person�
Sources:
Consortium, October 19, 2006
Title: �Who Is �Any Person� in Tribunal Law?�
Author: Robert Parry
http://consortiumnews.com/2006/101906.html
Consortium, February 3, 2007
Title: �Still No Habeas Rights for You�
Author: Robert Parry
http://consortiumnews.com/2007/020307.html
Common Dreams, February 2, 2007
Title: �Repeal the Military Commissions Act and Restore the Most
American Human Right�
Author: Thom Hartmann
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0212-24.htm
Student Researchers: Bryce Cook and Julie Bickel
Faculty Evaluator: Andrew Roth, Ph.D.
With the approval of Congress and no outcry from corporate media, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) signed by Bush on October 17, 2006, ushered in military commission law for US citizens and non-citizens alike. While media, including a lead editorial in the New York Times October 19, have given false comfort that we, as American citizens, will not be the victims of the draconian measures legalized by this Act�such as military roundups and life-long detention with no rights or constitutional protections�Robert Parry points to text in the MCA that allows for the institution of a military alternative to the constitutional justice system for �any person� regardless of American citizenship. The MCA effectively does away with habeas corpus rights for �any person� arbitrarily deemed to be an �enemy of the state.� The judgment on who is deemed an �enemy combatant� is solely at the discretion of President Bush.
The oldest human right defined in the history of English-speaking civilization is the right to challenge governmental power of arrest and detention through the use of habeas corpus laws, considered to be the most critical parts of the Magna Carta which was signed by King John in 1215.
Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist #84 in August of 1788:
The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any it [the Constitution] contains. The practice of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny. The observations of the judicious [British eighteenth-century legal scholar] Blackstone, in reference to the latter, are well worthy of recital:
�To bereave a man of life� says he, �or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.�
While it is true that some parts of the MCA target non-citizens, other sections clearly apply to US citizens as well, putting citizens inside the same tribunal system with non-citizen residents and foreigners.
Section 950q of the MCA states that, �Any person is punishable as a principal under this chapter [of the MCA] who commits an offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures its commission.�1
Section 950v. �Crimes Triable by Military Commissions� (26) of the MCA seems to specifically target American citizens by stating that, �Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States, or one of the co-belligerents of the enemy, shall be punished as a military commission under this chapter may direct.�1
�Who,� warns Parry, �has �an allegiance or duty to the United States� if not an American citizen?�
Besides allowing �any person� to be swallowed up by Bush�s system, the law prohibits detainees once inside from appealing to the traditional American courts until after prosecution and sentencing, which could translate into an indefinite imprisonment since there are no timetables for Bush�s tribunal process to play out.
Section 950j of the law further states that once a person is detained, � not withstanding any other provision of law (including section 2241 of title 28 or any other habeas corpus provision) no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause of action whatsoever relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission under this chapter, including challenges to the lawfulness of procedures of military commissions.�1
Other constitutional protections in the Bill of Rights, such as a speedy trial, the right to reasonable bail, and the ban on �cruel and unusual punishment,� would seem to be beyond a detainee�s reach as well.
Parry warns that, �In effect, what the new law appears to do is to create a parallel �star chamber� system for the prosecution, imprisonment, and possible execution of enemies of the state, whether those enemies are foreign or domestic.
�Under the cloak of setting up military tribunals to try al-Qaeda suspects and other so-called unlawful enemy combatants, Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress effectively created a parallel legal system for �any person��American citizen or otherwise�who crosses some ill-defined line.�
In one of the most chilling public statements ever made by a US Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales opined at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Jan. 18, 2007, �The Constitution doesn�t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn�t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended.�
More important than its sophomoric nature, Parry warns, is that Gonzales�s statement suggests he is still searching for arguments to make habeas corpus optional, subordinate to the President�s executive powers that Bush�s neoconservative legal advisers claim are virtually unlimited during �time of war.�
Citation
1. �Military Commissions Act of 2006� Public Law 109-366, 109th Congress. See http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_public_laws&docid=f :publ366.109.
UPDATE BY ROBERT PARRY
The Consortium series on the Military Commissions Act of 2006 pointed out that the law�s broad language seems to apply to both US citizens and non-citizens, contrary to some reassuring comments in the major news media that the law only denies habeas corpus rights to non-citizens. The law�s application to �any person� who aids and abets a wide variety of crimes related to terrorism�and the law�s provisions stripping away the jurisdiction of civilian courts�could apparently thrust anyone into the legal limbo of the military commissions where their rights are tightly constrained and their cases could languish indefinitely.
Despite the widespread distribution of our articles on the Internet, the major US news media continues to ignore the troubling �any person� language tucked in toward the end of the statute. To my knowledge, for instance, no major news organization has explained why, if the law is supposed to apply only to non-citizens, one section specifically targets �any person [who] in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States.� Indeed, the �any person� language in sections dealing with a wide array of crimes, including traditional offenses such as spying, suggests that a parallel legal system has been created outside the parameters of the US Constitution.
Since publication of the articles, the Democrats won control of both the House and Senate�and some prominent Democrats, such as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, have voiced their intent to revise the law with the goal of restoring habeas corpus and other rights. However, other Democrats appear hesitant, fearing that any attempt to change the law would open them to charges that they are �soft on terrorism� and that Republicans would torpedo the reform legislation anyway. Outside of Congress, pro-Constitution groups have made reform of the Military Commissions Act a high priority. For instance, the American Civil Liberties Union organized a national protest rally against the law. But the public�s lack of a clear understanding of the law�s scope has undercut efforts to build a popular movement for repeal or revision of the law.
To learn more about the movement to rewrite the Military Commissions Act, readers can contact the ACLU at https://secure.aclu.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=DOA_learn
https://secure.aclu.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=DOA_learn.
Comment
On June 8, 2007 the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act on an 11-8 vote. If approved, the bipartisan bill, authored by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, will restore habeas rights that were taken away last year by the Military Commissions Act. The bill will move to the full Senate for vote late June 2007.
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yawarakaijin
Joined: 08 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 9:36 pm Post subject: |
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Sweet.  |
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blaseblasphemener
Joined: 01 Jun 2006
Location: There's a voice, keeps on calling me, down the road, that's where I'll always be
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| Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 9:37 pm Post subject: |
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ditorial: Fight must continue to restore habeas rights
Published: Sunday, September 23, 2007
The U.S. Senate again failed to bring an end the practice of denying foreign terrorism suspects the right to challenge their detention in court. The suspension of habeas corpus for non-U.S. citizens labeled "enemy combatants" undermines the very idea of the constitutional guarantee of civil rights. These are rights that cannot be taken away at the whim of the government.
The 56-43 vote in the Senate this week fell short of the 60 needed to bring up the measure for consideration. The Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007 -- sponsored by Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania -- sought to restore the right to a court hearing for anyone held by the government as a foreign enemy combatant. That right was suspended under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, passed after the Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that the Bush administration could not revoke habeas rights of "illegal enemy combatants."
Those calling for restoring detainees' legal rights include Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Bush administration secretary of state; Kenneth Starr, the former independent counsel who led the Whitewater investigations; and David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union.
Under the Military Commissions Act, non-U.S. citizens labeled illegal enemy combatants come under the jurisdiction of military tribunals entirely outside this country's judicial system. Among other injustices, the tribunal may consider evidence obtained through coercion, and detainees have no guarantees that their cases will ever be heard. Restoring habeas rights is a first step toward dismantling a system that mocks the American sense of justice.
To say that restoring habeas rights to detainees threatens our security is to say our courts are incapable of dispensing justice. To say that those in the executive branch who make the determination of who is an enemy combatant are so infallible as to need no judicial oversight is to say our country has no need for the courts at all. To say that even those who are suspected of working to destroy our country will get a fair hearing in our courts is to fight terrorism from a position of strength.
The Habeas Corpus Restoration Act would restore rights to about 340 captives held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. These are not prisoners of war. Many were detained outside of combat zones. If the government has a case against an enemy combatant, let that case come before a judge. Our prisons are full of proof that the courts are capable of putting bad people away.
Guaranteeing habeas rights to non-U.S. citizens would also extend protections to the 12 million foreigners who live in this country as legal permanent residents and who now face losing all rights at the whim of the government. Leahy compared the suspension of habeas rights to the internment of the thousands of Japanese Americans without trial during World War II, which he said "was an action driven by fear, and it was a strain on America's reputation in the world."
This week's vote was the second defeat for the measure, which went down 48-51 a year ago. Yet the tally shows progress with the majority of senators now willing to move this country back toward the rule of law for all. Leahy has been a strong proponent of both open government and civil rights and has taken the lead in the habeas fight. The effort to remove this latest stain on the American reputation must continue. |
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blaseblasphemener
Joined: 01 Jun 2006
Location: There's a voice, keeps on calling me, down the road, that's where I'll always be
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| Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 9:43 pm Post subject: |
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Week in Review: The Real Betrayal
Posted September 23, 2007 | 08:36 PM (EST)
Read More: detainees, due process, general petraeus, habeas corpus, Military Commissions Act, Breaking Politics News
stumbleupon :Week in Review: The Real Betrayal digg: Week in Review: The Real Betrayal reddit: Week in Review: The Real Betrayal del.icio.us: Week in Review: The Real Betrayal
As Matt Bai noted this morning, the dominant story of the past two weeks isn't so much Congress's haggling over Iraq as its frenetic posturing over the now infamous "Petraeus or Betray Us" ad. Published in the Times on September 10th, the ad has provided a welcome distraction for Republicans dismayed by the grim reality of Iraq -- as well as, in a less sanctimonious way, Democrats eager to dodge criticism of their own inability to end the war.
* Email
* Print
Yet the catchphrase has also obscured the most significant news of all: namely, the Republican maneuvering to block a bill, introduced by Senator Leahy and Senator Specter, that would have restored America's commitment to due process.
To understand why that's so important, we need to go back to this time last year. At the end of last September -- less than two months before the mid-term elections -- a Republican-controlled Congress forced through the Military Commissions Act, which expressly denies detainees the right either to appeal to the Geneva Conventions or to file a writ of habeas corpus. As a result of those provisions, any person the military now classifies as an "alien unlawful enemy combatant" has no legal recourse outside the military itself. Thanks to the MCA, in other words, America's avowed commitment to universal due process officially went out the window.
The Leahy-Specter proposal sought to change that. Entitled "The Habeas Corpus Restoration Act," the bill would have allowed us to defend our sovereignty without compromising our principles. The military would still have been able to capture, detain, and even try suspected terrorists. But because the bill would have restored habeas corpus, there also would have been judicial oversight.
Yet the bill didn't even come to a vote. Forty-two Republican Senators, along with Senator Lieberman, killed the measure outright. Consequently the MCA was left intact -- and with it, American due process was left in abeyance.
Which brings me to my main point: America's failure in Iraq is less significant than its failure to uphold due process. To say that, of course, is not to diminish the national tragedy that our involvement there has become. Rather, it's merely to say that however disastrous Iraq may be, our operations in Iraq will only ever be a single instance of American foreign policy. Accordingly, our failures there will also only ever represent the failure of a specific strategy in a specific place -- not, that is, the failure of American principles more generally.
By contrast, the MCA's restriction of due process strikes at the very core of American legitimacy. The United States, after all, is the world's most thoroughly post-ethnic nation. What that means isn't merely that Americans define themselves by an idea rather than a bloodline. It also means that the validity of American governance rests not on how well it sustains a given culture or race, but how well it sustains the principles which, in a very fundamental sense, are America.
By contradicting those principles, the MCA effectively calls into question the legitimacy of American democracy. After all, hand-in-hand with our commitment to freedom is our belief that all individuals have an inalienable right to the due process of law. You simply can't have one without the other. Yet in denying habeas corpus, the MCA disavowed at once our commitment to both freedom and due process alike.
In the end, the fact that the MCA threatens what it means to be American is precisely why it needs to be either amended or repealed. Our failures in Iraq will never represent a complete betrayal of America, because American identity extends well beyond any single policy, no matter how regrettable. By contrast the MCA represents a thoroughgoing betrayal. To suspend due process is to suspend an integral aspect of American identity; it throws the entire idea of America into doubt.
Last week, the Senate had a golden opportunity to restore that idea in full. How reprehensible, then, that they were too distracted to seize it.
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And all when America has not declared war. It's amazing that you can actually invade a country without declaring war, and then bring in laws that give the President powers akin to god, due to it being a "time of war". |
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blaseblasphemener
Joined: 01 Jun 2006
Location: There's a voice, keeps on calling me, down the road, that's where I'll always be
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| Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 9:49 pm Post subject: |
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It's not every day that there is something concrete you can do to save democracy in one powerful stroke and make sure your kids don't come of age in an American in which we are no longer protected by the rule of law. I have been writing about the terrifying and precipitous assault on our liberties and our very system of checks and balances; I have crossed the country with this message -- today I am in Boston -- and I have heard across the nation that (as usual) the people are ahead of the leaders and the pundits. Americans of all backgrounds are alarmed and outraged and ready to take action against these vicious assaults on the rule of law. But what I hear again and again is: "What can we do?"
Here is what you can do, and it is big, big news. If we do this together in our millions we are safer; and if we fail to act we miss an historic opening and risk far worse to come.
There are two new organizations that are driving a grassroots push to restore the rule of law: the American Freedom Agenda was started by leaders who are conservative: Bruce Fein, who was a Reagan administration official in the Department of Justice, and others. The American Freedom Campaign was started by progressives. Both groups advance comparable 10 point legislative agendas that would stabilize democracy long enough for us to forestall the worst and regroup for more long-term reparation of the Constitution and the rule of law. Both would, if passed, protect Americans from the scary stories of abuse and recrimination I am hearing every single day -- journalists intimidated, prisoners tortured, innocent citizens spied on by the State in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Both would make it illegal for any administration to commit the kinds of crimes against America and its constitution that we have seen under this one: the innocent lawyer Brandon Mayfield's home broken into, the innocent software engineer Maher Arar kept prisoner by U.S. agents in an interrogation cell in a U.S. airport and prevented from calling his lawyer, and journalists reporting on abuses by the government threatened by the state with prosecution that could keep them in jail for a decade. Urgently it would close the horrific legal possibility for the president to call you or me an "enemy combatant" tomorrow -- JUST BECAUSE HE SAYS SO -- and lock us up in solitary confinement for years.
Passing the legislative agenda of either group would make it clear that American citizens -- in spite of a heretofore craven and compliant Congress -- refuse to stand by silently while a group of criminals systematically violates the core structure of the democracy our Founders put in place for us.
The big news is that this idea can now become a law and a law creates a reality.
On Monday, Rep. Ron Paul, the outsider Republican presidential candidate who has long upheld these values and who was an early voice warning of the grave danger to all of us of these abuses, introduced the AFA's legislative package into Congress. (The mainstream press has an irrational habit of disparaging outsider candidates -- as if corrupt money and machine endorsements equal seriousness of purpose -- even though the Founders hoped that the system they established would lead citizens, ideally those unembedded in the establishment, to offer their service to the nation.) It is the American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007 [PDF], and you should read it in its entirety: just as accounts of the recent abuses send chills down your spine, this beautifully argued document feels historic and has the ring of great power to correct great injustice.
What does it do? According to an alert put out by the American Freedom campaign, it would accomplish the following:
"The American Freedom Agenda Act would bar the use of evidence obtained through torture; require that federal intelligence gathering is conducted in accordance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA); create a mechanism for challenging presidential signing statements; repeal the Military Commissions Act, which, among other things, denies habeas corpus to certain detainees; prohibit kidnapping, detentions, and torture abroad; protect journalists who publish information received from the executive branch; and ensure that secret evidence is not used to designate individuals or organizations with a presence in the U.S. as foreign terrorists."
Ron Paul was the first of all the presidential candidates, red or blue, to step up in this way -- and all credit is due to him for getting there first. May the others of both parties race to follow his lead. These days, as we have seen from how reluctant some candidates have been -- even on the Democratic sign -- even to sign a mere pledge to uphold the Constitution, it takes some courage to stand fast against the assaults of this administration -- and their manipulations of the terms "patriotism" and "terror threat" -- and insist with legislation on the Founders' vision and on restoring democracy.
A groundswell of millions of Americans of all parties rising up to insist on passage of the AFA legislation means that we are awake -- we get it -- and that we assert that an alert citizenry, not a whipped-dog Congress or a violently abusive executive, decides what happens in this nation still. I am not a voter on his side of the ballot -- but I will move heaven and earth to support the passage of this lifesaving agenda. (Interestingly when I run into Paul's supporters -- who are deeply alert to the abuses of democracy -- and I demur by saying I am a Democrat, it is they who rightly assure me that these issues transcend party).
There is no way to overstate how crucial this piece of legislation is. We are at a turning point, and without the restoration of the rule of law the "blueprint" for what I have called a "fascist shift" -- the closing down of democracy -- calls for scarier recriminations against citizens, greater tightening of social controls -- the ever-growing, disturbingly political TSA watch list is, alarmingly, due to go from the airlines' administration to that of the TSA itself -- and more corruptions of the electoral process. Blackwater is a truly terrifying wild card. Without the rule of law we will be powerless as each of these assaults on liberty continue to escalate. With it we can fight back.
This is the answer both to those who say "What we can do?" and to those who claim (actually, sometimes whine) "there is nothing we can do." And if we don't act on this now we will get the democracy we deserve -- which is no democracy at all.
Put aside your partisan ideal world -- sometimes issues simply transcend partisanship -- and if ever there is an issue that is above and separate from party politics, it is the restoration of the democratic system we inherited. There are good people and passionate patriots across the political spectrum.
We at the AFC are putting out a call to pass this set of laws. Pick up the phone -- every day. Email your representative -- every day. Let them hear from millions of Americans a day. Let them hear from twenty. Please play hardball -- the times demand it and nice girls and boys have managed to get this Congress to do literally nothing at all to protect liberty.
Congressmen and women say off the record that they can't support liberty, much as they'd like to, because they are scared of "looking soft on terror" and they want to run out the clock -- a naive and self-serving posture in a time of crisis. Make them more scared of you if they don't. Tell them you will bombard their donors with the message that they have sold out liberty. Tell them you will denounce them as traitors to the Constitution in your local and regional letters to the editor and op-eds. Tell them they are unpatriotic to stand by while liberty is disemboweled. Tell them you will stop at nothing to ensure their future defeat unless they support this and make it the law of the land.
Let's do it. There is no excuse now. The restoration of democracy is up to you -- as the Founders intended it should be.
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Another reason to vote for Ron Paul.
Just curious, all the people who think Ron Paul is a nut, can you supply some quotes from the other candidates who are supporting this bill? Democratic or Republican would be great. |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 2:55 am Post subject: |
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SO IN THE US, HABEUS CORPUS IS NOW GONE?
You familiar with Posse Communtatus?
The neo-kons et al. are said to be working on eliminating this as well.
Oh, AmeriKa  |
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cbclark4
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan
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| Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 3:10 am Post subject: |
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| igotthisguitar wrote: |
SO IN THE US, HABEUS CORPUS IS NOW GONE?
You familiar with Posse Communtatus?
The neo-kons et al. are said to be working on eliminating this as well.
Oh, AmeriKa |
Did you mean "Posse Comitatus Act"
"...prohibits Federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under Federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States..."
Don't worry it doesn't preclude the use of Blackwater.
I think you have to get permission from David Rockefeller? |
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