NEW, UNPRECEDENTED POWERS

[Zlatko Waterman]

Does this sound like what you learned about the U.S. Constitution in school?:

(paste)

The measure would broaden the definition of enemy combatants beyond the traditional definition used in wartime, to include noncitizens living legally in the United States as well as those in foreign countries and anyone determined to be an enemy combatant under criteria defined by the president or secretary of defense.

It would strip Guantánamo detainees of the habeas right to challenge their detention in court, relying instead on procedures known as combatant status review tribunals. Those trials have looser rules of evidence than the courts.

It would allow evidence seized in this country or abroad without a search warrant to be admitted in trials.

The bill would also bar the admission of evidence obtained by cruel and inhuman treatment, except any obtained before Dec. 30, 2005, when Congress enacted the Detainee Treatment Act, that a judge declares reliable and probative.

( end paste)

(from "Congress Gives Bush Unprecedented New Powers"/ AP)

--Z

[stilltrucking]

...

[Zlatko Waterman]

Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)
By Molly Ivins
Truthdig

Wednesday 27 September 2006

With a smug stroke of his pen, President Bush is set to wipe out a safeguard against illegal imprisonment that has endured as a cornerstone of legal justice since the Magna Carta.

Austin, Texas - Oh dear. I'm sure he didn't mean it. In Illinois' Sixth Congressional District, long represented by Henry Hyde, Republican candidate Peter Roskam accused his Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth, of planning to "cut and run" on Iraq.

Duckworth is a former Army major and chopper pilot who lost both legs in Iraq after her helicopter got hit by an RPG. "I just could not believe he would say that to me," said Duckworth, who walks on artificial legs and uses a cane. Every election cycle produces some wincers, but how do you apologize for that one?

The legislative equivalent of that remark is the detainee bill now being passed by Congress. Beloveds, this is so much worse than even that pathetic deal reached last Thursday between the White House and Republican Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The White House has since reinserted a number of "technical fixes" that were the point of the putative "compromise." It leaves the president with the power to decide who is an enemy combatant.

This bill is not a national security issue-this is about torturing helpless human beings without any proof they are our enemies. Perhaps this could be considered if we knew the administration would use the power with enormous care and thoughtfulness. But 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.

Death by torture by Americans was first reported in 2003 in a New York Times article by Carlotta Gall. The military had announced the prisoner died of a heart attack, but when Gall saw the death certificate, written in English and issued by the military, it said the cause of death was homicide. The "heart attack" came after he had been beaten so often on this legs that they had "basically been pulpified," according to the coroner.

The story of why and how it took the Times so long to print this information is in the current edition of the Columbia Journalism Review. The press in general has been late and slow in reporting torture, so very few Americans have any idea how far it has spread. As is often true in hierarchical, top-down institutions, the orders get passed on in what I call the downward communications exaggeration spiral.

For example, on a newspaper, a top editor may remark casually, "Let's give the new mayor a chance to see what he can do before we start attacking him."

This gets passed on as "Don't touch the mayor unless he really screws up."

And it ultimately arrives at the reporter level as "We can't say anything negative about the mayor."

The version of the detainee bill now in the Senate not only undoes much of the McCain-Warner-Graham work, but it is actually much worse than the administration's first proposal. In one change, the original compromise language said a suspect had the right to "examine and respond to" all evidence used against him. The three senators said the clause was necessary to avoid secret trials. The bill has now dropped the word "examine" and left only "respond to."

In another change, a clause said that evidence obtained outside the United States could be admitted in court even if it had been gathered without a search warrant. But the bill now drops the words "outside the United States," which means prosecutors can ignore American legal standards on warrants.

The bill also expands the definition of an unlawful enemy combatant to cover anyone who has "has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." Quick, define "purposefully and materially." One person has already been charged with aiding terrorists because he sold a satellite TV package that includes the Hezbollah network.

The bill simply removes a suspect's right to challenge his detention in court. This is a rule of law that goes back to the Magna Carta in 1215. That pretty much leaves the barn door open.

As Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet dissident, wrote, an intelligence service free to torture soon "degenerates into a playground for sadists." But not unbridled sadism-you will be relieved that the compromise took out the words permitting interrogation involving "severe pain" and substituted "serious pain," which is defined as "bodily injury that involves extreme physical pain."

In July 2003, George Bush said in a speech: "The United States is committed to worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes, whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit."

Fellow citizens, this bill throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems it necessary-these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law.

I'd like those supporting this evil bill to spare me one affliction: Do not, please, pretend to be shocked by the consequences of this legislation. And do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis.

[Zlatko Waterman]

'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR by George Orwell
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/20/

[firsty]

z, thanks for posting this.

when i stepped out of my car last nite, npr had just said precisely the same thing ivins refered to, about the administration taking out the line about prisoners having access to the documents in their case.

a cold shiver ran down my spine. the sky was dark with an approaching storm. there was a hush in the evening, and i felt something die.

america as a free nation isnt dead, but it's on life support.

my only response to these issues can be a solemn nod of understanding in your direction. i see it, yes. i see that you do, too.

[MrGuilty]

...

[Doreen Peri]

Very scary.

I was listening to the congressional hearings on the radio. They were debating for and against this bill. Those who spoke against it spoke with the true conviction of patriots who knew that if this bill were to be passed, it would be like no other statement made before. It would say America is no longer America. I applauded the outspoken voices and thought, "Now, if anybody can't hear the truth in what they're saying, they are deaf." And yet it is expected to pass. When does it come up for a vote? Did I miss it?

Scares the daylights outa me. I keep shaking my head and I feel like slapping myself so I'll wake up. This is the stuff nightmares are made of.

[mtmynd]

If Lincoln (a Republican) could do it, certainly Bush can too. Dubya has told us repeatedly, "It's my job to protect the people of the United States", something within his oath to office:

"I, George Walker Bush, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and I will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

and that's it. But wait! If this oath is true, the president has no job to protect the people but rather the Constitution of the U.S., right?

O, yeah... he's a Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, too. Good call as he knows nothing about military service. Nor does his administration. Makes sense to me. Those that have never defended the U.S. shall hold office to do so. True patriots!

What does habeas corpus mean to anyone in our current administration? What does it mean to any good American? Sad situation.... sad times. What's a good capitalist supposed to do? Can't trust those Nazi Liberals. All they want to do is give the money away to needy people. They can't trust half the country. Damn! and now we're under siege by terrorists and 60% of the Iraqis who would like to see our troops dead.

Stay the coarse course, of course!

[stilltrucking]

...

[Zlatko Waterman]

Published on Saturday, September 30, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Democracy The Big Loser on Habeas Corpus
by Ralph Nader

The messianic, authoritarian George W. Bush and the minds of his cohorts have further collapsed the rule of law with his bulldozing through a divided Congress more dictatorial powers in his increasingly self-defined, self-serving and failing "war on terror."

The normally restrained /New York Times/ in an editorial titled "Rushing off a Cliff" condemned Bush's "ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217 year-old nation of laws-while doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser."

Bush has concentrated so much arbitrary power in his Presidency that he can be described in the vernacular as the torturer-in-chief, the jailer-in-chief and the arrestor-in-chief. Who needs the courts? Who needs the constitutional rights to habeas corpus for defendants to be able to argue that they were wrongfully arrested or capriciously imprisoned indefinitely without being charged?

The only light at the end of this Bush tunnel comes from many law professors and knowledgeable members of Congress, such as Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT), who believe that when this law reaches the Supreme Court, its offending and vague provisions will be declared unconstitutional. But that will take two years and in the meantime King George can continue expanding his massively losing tally of arrests, detentions and imprisonment of innocent people who are tortured or mistreated, isolated and defenseless.

As both military attorneys and civilian pro bono attorneys for those imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have declared-the vast majority of the nearly 700 "detainees" were innocent from the get-go, victims of bounty hunters in Afghanistan and neighboring countries who "sold" them for cash to intermediaries who turned them over to the U.S. military for transfer to Cuba. All these "catches" made George W. Bush look like he was really rounding up all those evil terrorists - like cab drivers, British tourists of Pakistani descent and so forth.

Timed for the November elections, Bush moves on Congress, complete with his minions there issuing McCarthyite press releases accusing opposing Democrats, in the words of House Speaker, Dennis Hastert (R - Ill.), of voting "in favor of MORE rights for terrorists." (His emphasis)

All this shameless, anti-American unconstitutional bile from the Bushites comes in the midst of his own top intelligence people reporting that their President's war in Iraq is providing a recruitment and training ground for growing numbers of terrorists in Iraq and from other countries. Earlier, Bush's own CIA Director, Porter Goss, told a Senate Committee the same thing. Bush's own generals in Iraq also agree. Critics call it pouring gasoline on a raging fire.

Nonetheless, the closed mind of Mr. Bush, whose foreign-military policies have upset his mother and father deeply, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, tells Americans that our country will be in Iraq doing what it is doing right through his Administration's term ending in January 2009.

Never mind the mounting American casualties, which Bush and Cheney deliberately undercount (see www.democracyrising.us); never mind the destruction of Iraq, its enormous civilian casualties and a growing insurgency and sectarian violence that would not be there without the Bush occupation. Never mind Bush's sectarian preferences, the Bush economic decrees, puppet politics and the widely reported Bush blunders and massive corruption-waste registered by his corporate contracting friends engaged in reconstruction-so called.

So long as the lawyers and their bar associations in America do not challenge the advancing dictatorial powers of George W. Bush, so long as citizen groups, labor unions and libertarians, conservatives and liberals avoid uniting together, these constitutional crimes against due process, probable cause, habeas corpus, together with torture and indefinite imprisonment at the whim of the Executive branch, will worsen and erode American jurisprudence with serious consequences for both the nation's security and its liberties.

The White House is on a rampage. The President is a documented lawless, reckless, arrogant politician whose policies are fueling more terrorism in the Middle East. Nonetheless, he then turns around and demands more flagrant over-rides on constitutional safeguards in order to let him fight terrorism. Quite a convenient vicious circle by him to hoist his daily politics of fear on the country.

Remember that telling thought by the British Parliamentarian, Edmund Burke, at the time of the American Revolution: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

###

[Zlatko Waterman]

ARE YOU AN UNLAWFUL COMBATANT? ( Justin Raimondo/ AntiWar.Com)

As usual, Raimondo includes many interesting hyperlinks and simply cutting and pasting his article is insufficient. He supplies some historical perspective, as well as his own speculations about Congress and Bush and general anxieties over the president's new powers.

Read his article at the link below . . .

( paste)

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9779

[gypsyjoker]

"it is dangerous for a man to be right when his government is wrong" Voltaire from memory

The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States.

Yes I been thinking about that for a week. I was wrong about the bill still in compromise. I was living in hope dang me.

I been thinking about what will play in Peoria. It is too late now. If I could channel a Wal-Mart pharmacy technician, “the traitors are the democrats” Yes I am puckered up in Texas. But I was born scared. All I can do is speak truth to power. And in this best of all spatio temporal worlds about us, the meek have in heirited the earth. A guy in powder blue smock has power over me.

Rove tells some funny fart jokes. I wonder if he read The Engineering Of Consent
We have met the enemy and he is us. I used to think that gospel song Bringing In The Sheaves was Bringing In The Sheep. How to reach the great unwashed. He puts forth an eloquent argument. But I don’t think my pharmacy clerk going to see it that way. Tide is turning on the war, I will have to keep on keeping on with that, I got no time to worry about fascists kicking in my door. Makes me feel right at home.


According to Professor McCall of the JHU Classics Department the Athenian cops were slaves because one Athenian would not surrender his freedom to another citizen. I used to love that guy McCall. He loved the classics and he loved to teach. It was a night class I took in the JHU night college. He would be reading an English translation of some Greek Lyric poet and break off in despair and say, “what an enemy we have in Greek.” I feel that way about English sometimes.

[Dave The Dov]

Could 1/21/2009 hurry up any faster???? I've grown tired of the "sidetracking" that this county has taken!!!!
_________________
grand daddy purple seeds

[tinkerjack]

There it is Dave, in a nut shell. Thanks for putting it so succinctly.sp?

[jimboloco]

we gonna perty like we never partied before
yet remembering dumya's ascent
now hardball dude blondy c matthewz says he's a fan of katherine harris
mercy
do i vote for numbnuts nelson?
ya know sometimes ya gotta side wid de devil, man
cause we cast 75,000 votes in florida for Nader/LaDuke
25,000 alone in Tampa Bay

never thought the Dumbya would emerge.
so i learnet my lesson
it's common cause against the repukeblikinz
i gotta vote with the progressive black caucus
who will generally either support a particular candidate
or eschew from voting alltogether
unfortunately i can understand the sentiment

it is possible to entertain an alienated perspective,
to maintain a seperate inner disalogue
annd yet find common cause against
the menace of the fucking neo-cons.