Tuesday, November 14, 2006

What with bald heads, illegal wars, and the drooling fascination with torture...

We don't need Freud to tell us Bush and Cheney have issues.

Do people realize what 'indefinitely' means? Do they know who gets to determine who is an 'enemy combatant'? Do people realize that gulags, detention centers, and secret police are now a reality?

The Democrats:
"Leahy's goal is to "try and do something to reverse the damage," said his spokeswoman, Tracy Schmaler.

Depending how the legislation is worded, it could set up a partisan showdown and even draw a veto from President Bush, according to experts.

It was just last month that Bush, with strong Republican backing in Congress, signed the law that suspends habeas rights for detainees and sets up a new protocol for trying them before military commissions.

Many Democrats opposed the Military Commissions Act largely because of the language that prevents detainees from challenging their confinement. Some also had concerns about the definition of torture in the law, with critics complaining that certain procedures that could be described as torture were not categorically outlawed.

The act is so controversial that civil rights lawyers filed a constitutional challenge immediately after Bush signed it."

Glenn Greenwald:
"At the very least, re-establishing habeas corpus rights for detainees is an absolute imperative. We simply cannot be a country that vests in the President the power to order people imprisoned for life with no real review of the charges against them, particularly when the detainees are not detained on any battlefield, and particularly when they are detained inside the U.S.

There is no greater betrayal of the core principles of American political life than to have the federal government sweep people off the streets, throw them into a black hole with no contact with the outside world and no charges asserted of any kind, and simply keep them there for as long as the President desires..."

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