We are now securely on the road to fascism. With the passage of the new military trials bill habeas corpus is even closer to being removed from the legal process. As of right now it only pertains to foreigners and those holding green cards. It is a small step to using these powers against American citizens who simply disagree with what our government is doing. The Bush/Cheney regime will go down in history as the time when Americans lost most of their rights and freedoms all in the name of protection and fear.
Washington Post Article:
Many Rights in U.S. Legal System Absent in New BillA couple of quotes for you:
"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 empowers the executive branch to detain indefinitely anyone it determines to have "purposefully and materially" supported anti-U.S. hostilities."
"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."
Most of congress didn't even read the bill. They simply passed it out of fear that they would seem "soft" on terrorism in an election year. Once again our politicians sell us out to the minority. Nice. Start looking for property outside of the US cause its one small step from hating and blaming foreigners to hating and blaming queers and people of color.
Andrew Sullivan posted a selection from Hillary Clinton's speech in response to this bill. It is amazing and I'm pasting it here:
"The light of our ideals shone dimly in those early dark days [of the Revolutionary War], years from an end to the conflict, years before our improbable triumph and the birth of our democracy. General Washington wasn't that far from where the Continental Congress had met and signed the Declaration of Independence. But it's easy to imagine how far that must have seemed. General Washington announced a decision unique in human history, sending the following order for handling prisoners:
Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren.Therefore, George Washington, our commander-in-chief before he was our President, laid down the indelible marker of our nation's values even as we were struggling as a nation and his courageous act reminds us that America was born out of faith in certain basic principles. In fact, it is these principles that made and still make our country exceptional and allow us to serve as an example. We are not bound together as a nation by bloodlines. We are not bound by ancient history; our nation is a new nation. Above all, we are bound by our values.
George Washington understood that how you treat enemy combatants could reverberate around the world. We must convict and punish the guilty in a way that reinforces their guilt before the world and does not undermine our constitutional values.
Now these values, George Washington's values, the values of our founding are at stake. We are debating far-reaching legislation that would fundamentally alter our nation's conduct in the world and the rights of Americans here at home. And we are debating it too hastily in a debate too steeped in electoral politics.
The Senate, under the authority of the Republican Majority and with the blessing and encouragement of the Bush-Cheney Administration, is doing a great disservice to our history, our principles, our citizens, and our soldiers. The deliberative process is being broken under the pressure of partisanship and the policy that results is a travesty," - Senator Hillary Rodham-Clinton.
It's about she got her shit together and talked the talk. Too bad it won't do any good. What was that about those ignorant of history being doomed to repeat it? Will we look back at the internet boom nineties like we look back on the Weimar period? Good times that gave way to demagogues and fascists?
Be afraid people, be very afraid.
