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Artyboy
09-28-2006, 18:25
LA Times article (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ackerman28sep28,0,2039999.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions)



The White House Warden
Congress may give the president the power to lock up almost anyone he thinks is a terror threat.

By Bruce Ackerman
BRUCE ACKERMAN is a professor of law and political science at Yale and author of "Before the Next Attack: Preserving Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism."

September 28, 2006

BURIED IN THE complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. 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. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops "during an armed conflict," it also allows him to seize anybody who has "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison.

Not to worry, say the bill's defenders. The president can't detain somebody who has given money innocently, just those who contributed to terrorists on purpose.

But other provisions of the bill call even this limitation into question. What is worse, if the federal courts support the president's initial detention decision, ordinary Americans would be required to defend themselves before a military tribunal without the constitutional guarantees provided in criminal trials.

Legal residents who aren't citizens are treated even more harshly. The bill entirely cuts off their access to federal habeas corpus, leaving them at the mercy of the president's suspicions.

We are not dealing with hypothetical abuses. The president has already subjected a citizen to military confinement. Consider the case of Jose Padilla. A few months after 9/11, he was seized by the Bush administration as an "enemy combatant" upon his arrival at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. He was wearing civilian clothes and had no weapons. Despite his American citizenship, he was held for more than three years in a military brig, without any chance to challenge his detention before a military or civilian tribunal. After a federal appellate court upheld the president's extraordinary action, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, handing the administration's lawyers a terrible precedent.

The new bill, if passed, would further entrench presidential power. At the very least, it would encourage the Supreme Court to draw an invidious distinction between citizens and legal residents. There are tens of millions of legal immigrants living among us, and the bill encourages the justices to uphold mass detentions without the semblance of judicial review.

But the bill also reinforces the presidential claims, made in the Padilla case, that the commander in chief has the right to designate a U.S. citizen on American soil as an enemy combatant and subject him to military justice. Congress is poised to authorized this presidential overreaching. Under existing constitutional doctrine, this show of explicit congressional support would be a key factor that the Supreme Court would consider in assessing the limits of presidential authority.

This is no time to play politics with our fundamental freedoms. Even without this massive congressional expansion of the class of enemy combatants, it is by no means clear that the present Supreme Court will protect the Bill of Rights. The Korematsu case — upholding the military detention of tens of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II — has never been explicitly overruled. It will be tough for the high court to condemn this notorious decision, especially if passions are inflamed by another terrorist incident. But congressional support of presidential power will make it much easier to extend the Korematsu decision to future mass seizures.

Though it may not feel that way, we are living at a moment of relative calm. It would be tragic if the Republican leadership rammed through an election-year measure that would haunt all of us on the morning after the next terrorist attack.



Someone tell me my tin foil hat is getting too tight :cry:

2ndChildhood
09-28-2006, 19:27
Dude, you ain't supposed to wear that stuff at all.

Besides, Habeas corpus was getting kind of old anyways.

I mean for crying out loud it's been around since 1215. :mrgreen:

Merl
09-28-2006, 19:51
I was pretty shocked when I heard the details of this on the radio earlier.

I'd say more but I've misplaced my tinfoil hat.. :)

BadShot
09-29-2006, 06:56
For the most part I'm in favor of what Shurb (Bush Jr.) does, but this is bad. As if we didn't give up enough of our freedoms and rights in the so called "Patriot Act".. we might as well go back to McCarthy erra fear of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time around the wrong person.

I hope this one gets killed!

Driftwood
09-29-2006, 08:18
Oh, who needs the Constitution anyway....

Artyboy
09-29-2006, 18:17
It passed

Merl
09-29-2006, 20:15
and both of our senators voted for it

All I can find in the bill regarding the part of the article:

This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops "during an armed conflict," it also allows him to seize anybody who has "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States."
is this
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:S.3930:

Sec. 948c. Persons subject to military commissions

`Any alien unlawful enemy combatant engaged in hostilities or having supported hostilities against the United States is subject to trial by military commission as set forth in this chapter.

In context it makes sense, it should be defined though.
Note that the word alien is used in who is subject to this. Alien is defined as a noncitizen.

Artyboy
09-29-2006, 20:33
I'm not quite as worried about what this administration will do as I am about what someone 20 years from now will do. Then again they're really pushing the whole terrorist thing. Who knows what they have planned? We've really only been affected by one major attack. That plot that they uncovered in the UK wasn't really a plot. Those guys didn't have passports, didn't have plane tickets purchased and it was arguable whether or not their bottles of water full of liquid explosives would have even had the desired effect. They just blew it out of proportion to frighten people into begging for more control and security. I, for one, would rather go out in a white flash than live my life afraid of what I say or do. How long until they start labeling American citizens as terrorists and making them dissapear without ever getting a trial?

Here's another one for you guys. House approves of wiretapping (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060929/ap_on_go_co/congress_eavesdropping)

Gman
10-08-2006, 18:50
Be wary of anything coming out of Yale.

...or Congress. :P

JohnTRourke
10-09-2006, 10:46
Welcome to the Police State :cry:

MuzzleFlash
10-12-2006, 10:53
I'm not quite as worried about what this administration will do as I am about what someone 20 years from now will do....
Bingo! Think of a President Hillary or Kerry with these sorts of powers to harrass gun owners. Suddenly anyone with a "Molon Labe" .sig line on an internet board is redefined as a potential terrorist subject to wiretapping and surveillance.