[UPDATE: Added an excerpt of Leahy’s input during the day of the Bush Torture Act hearings in the comments. Please click here and THANK Senator Leahy.]
Today was the first day of Arlen Specter’s show hearings regarding the President’s bill retroactively making torture and rape legal, and rescinding of the right to a trial.
I watched the hearings live, and must say “Thank You” to Senator Leahy for stating clearly that this bill is utterly UnAmerican. I hope, as the hearings continue he will continue to do so.
[more after the jump]
During the hearing, the Senator entered the following editorial into the Congressional Record. The editorial identifies this bill as a constitutional crisis [emphasis mine]:
In the blizzard of expensive TV ads and scathing stump speeches as the midterm elections approach, I doubt if any of the candidates and their supporters will focus on, or even mention, this assault on habeas corpus. But nine retired federal judges have tried to awaken Congress to this constitutional crisis. Among them are such often-honored jurists as Shirley Hufstedler, Nathaniel Jones, Patricia Wald, H. Lee Sarokin and William Sessions (who was head of the CIA and the FBI).
They write, particularly with regard to Mr. McCain’s concerns about torture, that without habeas petitions, how will the judiciary ensure that “Executive detentions are not grounded on torture”? The judges also remind Congress that the writ of habeas corpus has been suspended only four times in our history — and then, the Constitution states, only in “Cases of Rebellion or Invasion (when) the public Safety may require it.”)
To be sure, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas during the horrors of the Civil War; but in 1866, the Supreme Court declared that action unconstitutional because the civilian courts were still open during the war — as they still are right now. So, if this suspension becomes law, say these deeply concerned retired federal judges, “there will be protracted legislation for years to come” — and many detainees may never experience justice.
These judges also remind us — and Messrs. Warner, McCain and Graham (the latter has long wanted to undermine habeas) — that, as Chief Justice John Marshall declared, and warned, “ours is a government of laws, not men.” Having certainly acted on principle in putting the president on the defensive, McCain and Warner should now stand up for “the ‘Great Writ.'”
And Thomas Jefferson, as the Constitution was being written, objected even to the inclusion of a clause suspending habeas corpus because of the danger that suspension could be “habitual.”
Remember, the whole concept that every person deserves a trial, to ensure that they weren’t just imprisoned for pissing off the wrong guy, was originally included in the Magna Carta. It was subsequently suspended, and not reinvoked in Brittain until the 1670s, when the members of Parliament realized that their lives were on the line after the peasants decided that perhaps they, too, deserved some rights.
It was then included in the Constitution, because the Founding Fathers had witnessed firsthand the abuses of a government that reclassifies people who disagree with it as criminals and locks them up indefinitely without cause.
And ever since that time, with a few exceptions which were roundly denounced by the Supreme Court, it has held as the law of this land.
Past administrations defended this country against entire nations without sacrificing our rights, but this crew can’t even protect us from a rag-tag band of thugs without destroying everything we stand for.
The right to a trial is the stepping stone that makes all of the other rights in the Constitution mean something. If you can be carted away for no reason whatsoever, and imprisoned without ever coming before a court of law, then you have no rights. You can have no “due process” those rights laid out in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights as amendments 4, 5, and 8, if you can’t even get into a courtroom to be heard.
All that has to happen for one to lose everything is to be declared an “enemy combatant” by someone, which means that without any evidence, without any warrant, without having committed any crime, you can lose your future. If this bill passes, you will have no right to a trial to make sure that you’ve been locked up for committing an actual crime. As an added bonus, most of the immoral and counter-productive procedures formerly known as torture and rape will be re-defined as “forceful interrogation,” making them “legal.”
This means that, for the simple act of pissing off the wrong person, – or worse having the wrong name or looking suspicious – you can spend months, years, or the rest of your life in a filthy cage, having other people’s genitals forced down your throat without it being considered rape, and you can have your face wrapped in Saran Wrap, then have water poured over your head repeatedly, so you’re suffocating and feel like you’re drowning, all while strapped down and unable to move, without it being considered torture. Note: You’ll actually be tortured and raped, but the torturers and rapists will be get off scott-free, because someone called you a combatant, like the guy from Canada who was dragged off to a rent-a-gulag in Syria and tortured for the horendous crime of catching a flight home.
So, again, thank you to Senator Leahy for this first salvo today. Please keep up the good work. Please do whatever you can to keep this piece of wicked doggerel from making its way to the floor for a vote.
If you think there is any way your constituents can help prevent this bill from seeing the light of day, let us know. We’re listening.