Habeas Corpus, Part II

The birth of Habeas Corpus:

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

(Articles 39 & 40, Magna Carta, presented to King John, June 17, 1215 at Runnymede, England)

The death of Habeas Corpus:

Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

(Deatinee Detention Act, Oct 2006)

Oh, I (and my kids) Feel Safer Now...

We're only a third of the way through October, and the meltdown of this administration continues in high gear:

• Revelations of the National Intelligence Estimate saying things are getting steadily worse in Iraq, followed by...
• Revelations by Bob Woodward that this administration is in a State of Denial, followed by...
  
• Revelations of child molestation and cover-ups by the Repugs in Congress, led by the Speaker of the House, followed by...
• Revelations of a nuclear test by North Korea, followed by...

... by, what can possibly come next? It's hard to the top testing of real WMDs, but the only reason impeachments, jail sentences, and special prosecutors have not started up is because the Repugs are screwing up so fast, even Fox news can't keep up with them. Who now, in their right minds, would vote for anyone associated with ANY of them?

Habeas Corpus - Part I

Habeas corpus ... is Latin for "you may have the body" (subject to examination). It is a writ which requires a person detained by the authorities be brought before a court of law so that the legality of the detention may be examined.


It is important to note that the framers of the Constitution for the United States of America choose to include in the body of the Constitution the Writ of Habeas Corpus while other important individual rights, arguably as an afterthought, were included in the first ten amendments which were popularly called the Bill of Rights.

Habeas Corpus has been suspended at times during our history (Civil War, Japanese-American internments in WWII), but this is the first time it is being suspended indefinitely for any person determined, by the President and his administration, to be a threat in some way to the country.

For any of you with family members and friends in the military (as I do), this is truly frightening. Any other country may now feel free to do the very same thing to our sons and daughters.

The Repugnant Neocons can't stand it when you call them lawless, but there is now no other apt description. The Geneva Conventions are international law - we have been, up to now, signatories of that law for over 50 years - in fact helped write it.

The new 'detainee' law, no matter how they spin it, throws out that law and makes us seen as outlaws in terms of how we detain and try people and how we determine to do so.

More to come on this subject.