For those of us that aren"t lawyers, habeas corpus means is the idea that, as Americans, we are safe in our person from being seized on a whim by the government and whisked away never to be seen or heard from again. The Founders specified this right in the Constitution because they knew it had been seriously abused before and has always been the particularly effective tool of tyrants.
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is the new law Bush signed into law this morning does away with that right in America. I could go on and on about why this is important, but I think I"ll just touch on the highlights and provide a link to a more in-depth article on it MSNBC.
The big picture:
If Mr. Bush or Mr. Rumsfeld say so, anybody in this country, citizen or not, innocent or not, can end up being declared an unlawful enemy combatant. In fact, it says that if you even give material support to an organization that the president deems connected to one of these groups, you too can be an enemy combatant, even if you did so unknowlingly. And all of these declarations are at the whim of the President (for now this is Bush, but it could be anyone else in the future, provided Bush doesn"t declare political enemies unlawful combatants).
Americans no longer have the following rights:
1) the right to question why they are being held or imprisoned;
2) the right to an attorney;
3) the right to not be forced to testify against oneself;
4) the right to know the evidence being presented against us so that we can defend ourselves from it;
Here"s what Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University said:
This is "a huge sea change for our democracy. The framers created a system where we did not have to rely on the good graces or good mood of the president. In fact, Madison said that he created a system essentially to be run by devils, where they could not do harm, because we didn"t rely on their good motivations.
"Now we must. And people have no idea how significant this is. What, really, a time of shame this is for the American system. What the Congress did and what the president signed today essentially revokes over 200 years of American principles and values"I think people are fooling themselves if they believe that the courts will once again stop this president from taking over"taking almost absolute power."
"And so we may have, in this country, some type of uber-president, some absolute ruler, and it"ll be up to him who gets put away as an enemy combatant, held without trial.
"
"It"s something that no one thought"certainly I didn"t think"was possible in the United States. And I am not too sure how we got to this point. But people clearly don"t realize what a fundamental change it is about who we are as a country. What happened today changed us."
Here"s a link to msnbc article on it:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15318240/
Bye Bye Habeas Corpus
...I have nothing to worry about...I don't associate with or aid terrorists...unless of course they pay real well....
