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Tell Senators to Restore Habeas Corpus

Tell Senators to Restore Habeas Corpus

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President Bush currently has the power to declare anyone he wants, including U.S. citizens, to be an “enemy combatant” — and imprison them indefinitely without access to our court system – and without any explanation for their imprisonment.

The Senate is set to vote this week on whether or not to restore habeas corpus — the fundamental constitutional right that allows citizens to challenge the lawfulness of their imprisonment.

Contact your U.S. senators now and speak up to save habeas corpus and restore the Constitution.

Last September, Congress shamefully passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) — which codified the suspension of habeas corpus rights, and allowed the government to continue holding prisoners at Guantanamo (and other secret sites) indefinitely with no access to a fair hearing in court.

Indefinite imprisonment without judicial review is unconstitutional — and fundamentally un-American. It’s a hallmark of fascist dictatorships, not constitutional democracies like ours.

Fortunately, there is movement in Congress to restore this fundamental constitutional right. This Monday, September 14th, the Senate is expected to resume debate on the Department of Defense Authorization bill and vote on S.185, the Specter-Leahy amendment to restore habeas corpus. This will be the first full up-or-down vote in Congress on restoring habeas corpus, and could give Guantanamo prisoners the long-denied right to independent review of their detention.

If our moral standing in the world community is ever to be restored, this bill is a very good first step.

(Action sponsored by Act for Change / Working Assets)

Five Years of Guantanamo Bay Injustice

Five Years of Guantanamo Bay Injustice

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Close Guantanamo Bay…and don’t just move them to the shiny new “detention centers” in Texas. All detainees should either be charged and tried in accordance with international fair trial standards or else released.

Today, Amnesty International activists around the country and the world mark the fifth anniversary of the first transfer of detainees to Guantánamo Bay by holding public actions demanding that the detention facility be closed.

Amnesty International was the first to call for the closure of the detention facilities at Guantánamo.

Five years ago the U.S. began detaining people at Guantánamo Bay without charges . . . without trial . . . without legal recourse . . . and without hope. The interrogation regime there led to many allegations of torture and ill-treatment. Five years later, despite widespread international condemnation, hundreds of people of more than 30 nationalities remain there.

Many like Murat Kurnaz, only 20 when detained, were released without charge after years of harsh and cruel detention. Some were as young as 13 when detained. The overwhelming majority have been held only on suspicion, guilty until proven innocent.

Every day that the Guantánamo Bay detention facilities remain open is another day when the United States of America broadcasts to the world its utter lack of respect for the most basic human rights principles.

Take action to protest the anti-American policies enacted under the name of the “war on terror”:

“Yes, they could be held there for the duration of their lives.” – Cully Stimson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs

The Torch is out

The Torch is out

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“Let the world go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today, at home and around the world!” – John F. Kennedy

Sorry, Jack, you were wrong about your generation. That American torch is extinguished, for now. Sad to see the line broken, but there it is. Played by fear and hate, the U.S. Congress has passed unconstitutional legislation that denies individuals detained by the United States the ability to challenge their detentions and treatment in court (habeas corpus).

Instead of holding the executive branch accountable for its abuses, Congress has now:

  • Given the Executive branch unchecked power to label anyone as an “unlawful enemy combatant” and to detain such persons, including U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.
  • Said that evidence obtained through “coercion” is acceptable (just like the Inquisitions).
  • Specifically denied independent judicial review of detentions.
  • Tried to eliminate accountability for previous violations of the law
  • Granted the Secretary of Defense authority to deviate from time-tested military justice standards for fair trials.

Fair trials, due process of law, habeas corpus, human rights – these are fundamental American values. We have nothing to be proud of in this legislation or in those who have voted for it.

Measures Passed:

Military Commissions Act: By 65 yeas to 34 nays (Vote No. 259), Senate passed S. 3930, to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, after taking action on the following amendments proposed thereto:


Rejected:
By 48 yeas to 51 nays (Vote No. 255), Specter Amendment No. 5087, to strike the provision regarding habeas review.
By 46 yeas to 53 nays (Vote No. 256), Rockefeller Amendment No. 5095, to provide for congressional oversight of certain Central Intelligence Agency programs.
By 47 yeas to 52 nays (Vote No. 257), Byrd Amendment No. 5104, to prohibit the establishment of new military commissions after December 31, 2011.
By 46 yeas to 53 nays (Vote No. 258), Kennedy Amendment No. 5088, to provide for the protection of United States persons in the implementation of treaty obligations.

“If Vice President Cheney is right, that some ‘cruel, inhumane, or degrading’ treatment of captives is a necessary tool for winning the war on terrorism, then the war is lost already.” – Vladimir Bukovsky, who spent nearly 12 years in Soviet prisons, labor camps, and psychiatric hospitals for nonviolent human rights activities

“No good intelligence is going to come from abusive interrogation practices.” – Lieutenant John F. Kimmons, Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence

The UN Committee against Torture and the UN Human Rights Committee have found the US interrogation methods are unlawful and have expressed concern at arbitrary detentions. “The bill does not take into account substantive criticism from our side … It is not the signal that I would have expected the US government and Congress would make in order to try to comply with our recommendations,” Nowak said.

In London, Amnesty International vowed a campaign against the legislation.

“Once again the Bush [team] has succeeded in significantly breaching the rule of law. This is to the great delight of the `Islamoterrorists’ whose aim is to destroy the political system of the godless West,” the Swiss daily Tribune de Geneve said in an editorial on Friday. “Bush Junior now has tailor-made justice,” it said.

“This is one of the most regressive pieces of legislation in US history,” Reed Brody, legal counsel at the New York-based group Human Rights Watch, told Reuters. “The Bush administration has been given authority to determine who is an enemy combatant and to lock people up on its own say-so indefinitely without trial,” Brody said. “We would have thought that after Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and secret prisons, the administration would have learned mistreatment and torture do not make the country safer against terrorism, but in fact render it more vulnerable.”

The International Commission of Jurists said the law put inmates at Guantanamo and elsewhere “back in a legal black hole”. “It is terrible to say the least for the detainees and rule of law in the United States, but also a dangerous precedent because it undermines international human rights law standards,” said Gerald Staberock, head of the ICJ’s global security program.

Shami Chakrabarti, director the of UK-based human rights group Liberty, said: “This unsavory political compromise will send the worst possible signal about the United States government’s commitment to the rule of law.”

Paris’s left-leaning Le Monde newspaper attacked the bill in an editorial earlier this week, saying it would give Bush “the power to authorize the CIA to use interrogation methods that respect neither US legislation, nor international law codified by the Geneva conventions. In fact, it would be able to resort to torture. Mr. Bush is playing his usual card: to put the fear of terrorism before any thought on the means to fight it.”

The fact is that Bush administration schemes don’t work – not for our national interests, not for our national security – and they strip us of some of the qualities and values that made America a country to be proud of. Privacy rights, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right to peaceable assembly – all of this and much else has been undermined and eroded by this horrible administration. All this, lost and given away, without addressing the root causes of terrorism or to making us any safer from those who would destroy us.

Look for the lights that still shine in the darkness. America cannot tolerate this pathological climate. Those who have a voice, speak. Those who have ears, hear and listen. Those who have wisdom, vote for the ones that have at least a little bit of that light left – real light. The torch is out, but the hearth-fires of October are banked. Carry the warm embers until the torchbearers return.

5 Things Specter Won’t Say about Cheney-Specter Spying Bill

5 Things Specter Won’t Say about Cheney-Specter Spying Bill

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  1. The Cheney-Specter bill makes following the protections in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act totally optional. The bill would change the law so that foreign intelligence surveillance of Americans could be conducted without following FISA’s requirement of individualized judicial review of wiretaps. The bill would change the law to allow the president to ignore FISA’s protections and unilaterally decide which Americans to wiretap, indefinitely and without any mandatory check to protect individual rights. The bill also gives President Bush support for his currently untenable argument that FISA does not apply in wartime by deleting the provisions saying FISA does apply in wartime. If the bill passes, presidents will have multiple avenues to circumvent the statute, rendering moot its protections for Americans’ civil liberties.
  2. The Cheney-Specter bill does not require President Bush to get a warrant for every wiretap of every American currently subject to the NSA’s illegal warrantless wiretapping. President Bush’s so-called “concession” to submit a “program” to the FISA court to approve is not required by the bill—it’s conditional. Only if the bill passes exactly as it was written by the White House or with additional White House changes has President Bush “promised” that he will submit one of his secret surveillance programs to the FISA Court. Nothing in the bill requires him to do so, and the Cheney-Specter bill has stacked the deck so that the court will hear only the administration’s arguments and is directed to approve surveillance without ever knowing the name of every American wiretapped and any facts supporting such surveillance. Nothing in the bill requires any future president to get approval of programs of surveillance let alone actual warrants based on evidence a particular American is conspiring with al Qaeda.
  3. The Cheney-Specter bill legalizes President Bush’s illegal spying although Congress doesn’t really know all that he has directed the NSA to do regarding people in the US. The bill rewrites FISA to legalize the surveillance President Bush is currently conducting in defiance of the law. Yet, the administration has stonewalled congressional attempts to learn the true scope and nature of all of the illegal surveillance the administration has secretly authorized. Specter, himself, has called President Bush’s NSA program illegal “on its face,” yet his bill provides statutory power to do more than the president has admitted and it expands the NSA’s power to search Americans’ calls, e-mails, and homes without any warrant under FISA.
  4. The Cheney-Specter bill allows law enforcement to enter Americans’ homes and offices without a warrant. Landlords, custodians and “other people” would be required to let law enforcement officers to access Americans’ computers and telephones, and no warrant is required, simply government say-so—under the expanded powers in the bill. This measure flies in the face of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
  5. The Specter bill does not enforce the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause stating with particularity the things to be searched and seized. Specter’s bill so broadly redefines whom can be spied on without a warrant that countless Americans would be subject to secret NSA surveillance. All international phone calls and emails would be subject to warrantless surveillance under the bill’s changes to the law. Plus, emails and other Internet traffic would be subject to monitoring if the government did not know the physical location of every recipient of an American’s email. Furthermore, the bill creates a new type of generalized surveillance power, which, while it requires court approval, does not require the government to identify each target in the US, the basis for such surveillance or the method of monitoring each American—wiretaps, bugging or other devices. Under this exceedingly low threshold, the NSA could win approval for conducting surveillance of countless Americans while keeping secret from the courts and Congress who is being monitored and even whether the spying approved actually helps protect against terrorism.

A federal judge has already ruled that the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program violates the Constitution and must stop. But instead of listening to the judge, the White House and its allies are continuing to pressure Congress for new, expanded and unchecked government spying powers. Help convince Congress to support the rule of law, not limitless executive power.

Take action! Tell your members of Congress to oppose the Specter-Cheney Bill and other dangerous proposals that threaten your rights.

(ACLU – American Civil Liberties Union)

No, President Bush, it is not your government

No, President Bush, it is not your government

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This about sums it up. Bush really doesn’t seem to be able to accept the differences between American democracy and a kingship.

Bush declares himself absolute ruler: It’s ‘my government’
August 8, 2006 6:28 AM

Once again, President George W. Bush has shown complete disregard and utter contempt for the documents which define this country: The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Speaking in Crawford, Texas, Monday, Bush said:

“The loss of life on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border has been a great tragedy. Millions of Lebanese civilians have been caught in the crossfire of military operations because of the unprovoked attack and kidnappings by Hezbollah. The humanitarian crisis in Lebanon is of deep concern to all Americans, and alleviating it will remain a priority of my government.”

“My government?” Abraham Lincoln, in the Gettysburg Address, said the Constitution establishes a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” The Declaration of Independence starts with phrase “We the people.” They say nothing of turning the government over to any elected official so that it becomes “my government.”

Presidents have administrations and they can, and usually do, refer to such as “my administration.” But Bush, we believe, feels his power is absolute and the government of this nation belongs not to the people but to him and him alone.

This is not the first time that Bush has disregarded the protections of freedoms that are the cornerstone of our Republic. His widespread abuse of power has forced the Supreme Court to slap him down again and again, especially on the abandonment of Constitutionally-guaranteed rights for detainees at Guantanamo and others held without due course in the hysteria following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The American Bar Association recently issued a report noting his abuse of the Constitution through a deluge of “signing statements” where he declares he does not have to obey laws passed by Congress.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, while serving as White House Counsel, wrote a memo that referred to the Constitution as “an outdated document” and Bush himself has expressed contempt for the very document he has twice sworn an oath to uphold and defend.

America is no longer a democracy or a democratic republic. Government no longer belongs to the people. The President of the United States has declared it do be a government of Bush, by Bush and for Bush.

In his own words, Bush calls it “my government.”

As has happened too often in the past, the fate of a nation and the world rests in the hands of a megalomaniacal despot who claims absolute power to wage war, destroy freedom and spread chaos.

© Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue

Ducking Congressional Oversight – Again

Ducking Congressional Oversight – Again

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Republican Pete Hoekstra, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has criticized Bush for hiding more surveillance programs from Congressional oversight. The NY Times has published his criticism of Bush on this matter.

On Fox News Sunday, Hoekstra said that a whistleblower came to him with several more spying operations that were in danger of being abused without oversight.

Wait… several more??

Hoekstra: …this is actually a case where the whistleblower process was working appropriately. Some people within the intelligence community brought to my attention some programs that they believed we had not been briefed on. They were right. We have now been briefed on those programs, but I wanted to reinforce to the President and to the executive branch in the intelligence community how important and by law–the requirement that they keep the legislative branch informed of what they are doing.

See video at Crooks and Liars

So…. first, an internal whistleblower comes to him because he knows that the legislative branch hasn’t even been informed about several other spying operations.

Then, once it’s clear that this is the case, they are (probably very partially) informed under a question-and-answer format?

Even this Republican ally says

“The U.S. Congress simply should not have to play Twenty Questions to get the information that it deserves under our Constitution.”

So what are you going to do about it, Congress?

What are you going to do about it?