One Step Closer to Tyranny

[chequita guevara]

It passed 65-34!?! Oh God.

[chequita guevara]

Both of my son-of-a-***** senators voted for this betrayal of America.

[chequita guevara]

Eight hundred ****ing years of habeas corpus, all the way back to the Magna Carta. Gone.

[GePap]

It would be nice to imagine that a democratic congress would work to overturn this grave mistake, but given the gutlessness of those idiots, the only hope is for someone to challenge this bill in the courts somehow.

Sad day for our country.

[chequita guevara]

What was the goddamned imminent danger that they had to sign away our most basic rights!!?!?!?!?!?

[GePap]

From CNN:

Agreement at a glance

* Requires that a defendant being tried by military commission have access to any evidence given to a jury.
* Drops a section of the administration's previous proposal that stated an existing ban on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment satisfies the nation's obligations under the Geneva Conventions.
* Prohibits "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions. Defines grave breaches as acts such as torture, rape, biological experiments and cruel and inhuman treatment.
* Notes the president has the authority to interpret "the meaning and application" of the Geneva Conventions.
* Allows hearsay evidence.
* Allows coerced testimony if the statement was acquired before a 2005 ban on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and a judge finds it to be reliable. Bans coerced statements taken after the 2005 ban went into effect if it violates constitutional definitions of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
* Bars individuals from protesting violations of Geneva Conventions standards in court.

So:

*We get to use materials we got from torture before congress got the balls to ban it. How American.
*GW Bush gets to define the "meaings and applications" of the Geneva Conventions. Yes, a man who says nucular gets to define something....
*Yeah, my brother's friend heard this guy is a terrorist...is now valid evidence..
* If we do violate your Geneva Convention rightd anyway, sorry, but you have no one to complain to anyways....

Yeah, lets show the people of the world the meaning of Freedom!

[Whoha]

one veto proof majority step closer

[chequita guevara]

The 2nd most annoying thing is listening to the various Black people I know saying it was always like this for them. It's not like I can really argue against that.

[Imran Siddiqui]

****

[chequita guevara]

I thought maybe I was overblowing this, but when I read the NYT editorial and they used the same words I did . . .

[chequita guevara]

Editorial
Rushing Off a Cliff

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

•There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

[chequita guevara]

I'm literally stunned. Was there even a filibuster attempt?

[mrmitchell]

Nevermind. One of my Senators was smarter than that.

Blanche Lincoln for President

PS. At least one of the Dems that wasn't up for reelection this year could have filibustered it. WHY

[GePap]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
I'm literally stunned. Was there even a filibuster attempt?

No, probably because, given the vote, it would have failed, and the spineless democratic leadership probably thought it would be "hurtful" if one of their own were seen as "coddling terrorist."

I this point I expect nothing from the Republican Congress (abnd am mystified by liberals who see McCain as anything other than just another conservative Republican), but I am trully insulted by the Democrats. They don't deserve the Congress if they can;t even fight this out of fear.

[Jon Miller]

I literally feel sick

JM