Comments | iainuki: Awful Political News

iainuki

Awful Political News

Sep 30, 2006 23:28

This week the Republicans in Congress, at the behest of Bush's administration, rammed through a bill that violates the word and the spirit of the Constitution (see, at a minimum, article 1 section 9 paragraph 2; amendments 5, 6, 7 and 8, at a minimum; and disregards the Geneva convention, as a sort of side-note) and grants dictatorial powers to the ( Read more... )

Comments 18

camlost October 1 2006, 04:00:08 UTC

How ... vitriolic. Not that I disagree (at least insofar as I have followed this bits of news). Some things are just to depressing to read about.

camlost October 1 2006, 04:48:35 UTC

Good Lord. Now that I've actually read it ...

That's worse than I thought.

sillygoosegirl October 1 2006, 04:29:28 UTC

I think I'm going to go cry myself to sleep now.

Shameful and Shameless sillygoosegirl October 1 2006, 05:21:54 UTC

I have formally declared myself an enemy combatant of this shameful government. My weapons are peace, truth and the firm belief in our shared humanity, both domestic and abroad. We need to stand up and take back our nation.

bobbzman October 1 2006, 06:16:17 UTC

I completely agree with your thesis in general, but there's one claim in the blog you linked that I'm having trouble verifying:

"But as Law Professors Marty Lederman and Bruce Ackerman each point out, many of the extraordinary powers vested in the President by this bill also apply to U.S. citizens, on U.S. soil."

I read through the text of the bill (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:S.3930:) and while the definition of "enemy combatant" can easily apply to anyone, later uses that I noticed specified "alien enemy combantat", with "alien" being previously defined to mean non-U.S. citizens. Neither of the articles mentioned in the blog dealt with that.

I may have easily missed something and it doesn't make the bill much better, but I just noticed that and was curious what your own reading came up with.

bobbzman October 1 2006, 06:18:37 UTC

Re: the text of the bill

The last semicolon needs to be included for the link to work

bobbzman October 1 2006, 06:24:05 UTC

I mean colon. I always get those mixed up.

snailprincess October 1 2006, 08:03:02 UTC

I don't have a reference to back this up, but I recall it being mentioned that at some point in all this 'security' bills that have been passed, the President was given, or perhaps simply asserted the right to remove the citizenship of anyone deemed 'a terrorist'. Which means this recent bill could be applied.

However, as I said, I have no reference for this.

Thread 6

snailprincess October 1 2006, 08:10:12 UTC

Yeah... It's pretty crazy. I mean, the President likes to compare our current 'war' on terrorism to the life or death struggle that was WWII. It's interesting to note in that war, when are way of life was possibly threatened, we had to explicit policy of torturing German or Japaneese prisoners for information. I'm certain bad things were done, perhaps with good intentions, but the official position was to treat prisoners of war well.

Now we are faced with an enemy who, while capable of perpetrating acts that shock us, does not actually pose a threat to our nations survival, and we have an official policy of torture ( ... )

snailprincess October 1 2006, 08:11:01 UTC

That should read 'we had NO explicit policy of toturing...'

thegreatgonz October 1 2006, 16:14:06 UTC

I'm likewise appalled, but I can't bring myself to blame the Republicans (though I do blame the president). The fault, I fear, lies not in the stars but in ourselves. They're doing this because a substantial majority of Americans actually want them to. That, to me, is the real horror. Authoritarians come and go, but when a free people voluntarily gives up its freedom... I can think of few things more dangerous, or more disturbing.

The real genius of these laws is that everything they authorize is secret- the torture takes place in secret prisons outside the U.S., the warrantless surveillance takes place in classified sub-basements in Virginia, and the relevant portions of the kangaroo courts that this bill authorizes will undoubtedly be closed to public view. Thus, the evils these laws perpetrate will, barring the efforts of any principled leakers, remain concealed, and therefore theoretical, to the general public. Note that the American public, which was shocked and outraged by the abuses at Abu Ghraib, now supports a law which ( ... )

iainuki October 1 2006, 16:54:14 UTC

They all swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, and this bill does nothing of the sort. I certainly can hold them personally responsible, and I do. Of course, that doesn't mean the voters aren't also responsible for this travesty; there's plenty of blame to go around.

I agree that the secrecy is one of the worst parts of this bill. It really is sad that the administration has figured out how to game the system so well.