HABEAS CORPUS
DEAD SEPTEMBER 28TH 2006
2ND UPDATE WITH PERTINENT QUOTES FROM PRESIDENT AND FOUNDING FATHER THOMAS JEFFERSON
UPDATED WITH A PERTINENT QUOTE FROM THE LAW THE SENATE PASSED AND QUOTE FROM PM Churchill.
Most Americans don't even know what Habeas Corpus means much less that it was abolished today.
The Senate passed a Law that permits Torture, Pardons Bush or any of his Cohorts from Prosecution for any violations of the War Crimes Act in the past.
The House abolished Habeas Corpus today. 53 Democrats agreed to it. The Torture Law Passed the Senate 65 to 34. Thanks for the misleadership Rep. Pelosi and Sen. Reid.
Now can we drop the false Dialectic?
"The Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume." --Thomas Jefferson to A. H. Rowan, 1798. ME 10:61
"Freedom of the person under the protection of the habeas corpus I deem [one of the] essential principles of our government." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural Address, 1801. ME 3:322
"Why suspend the habeas corpus in insurrections and rebellions? The parties who may be arrested may be charged instantly with a well defined crime; of course, the judge will remand them. If the public safety requires that the government should have a man imprisoned on less probable testimony in those than in other emergencies, let him be taken and tried, retaken and retried, while the necessity continues, only giving him redress against the government for damages. Examine the history of England. See how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas corpus law have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treasons, wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected. Yet for the few cases wherein the suspension of the habeas corpus has done real good, that operation is now become habitual and the minds of the nation almost prepared to live under its constant suspension." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 7:97
I included the above quote because of this part of the Law - "Subsection 4(b) (26) of section 950v. of HR 6166 - Crimes triable by military commissions - includes the following definition.
"Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States , knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States, or one of the co-belligerents of the enemy, shall be punished as a military commission under this chapter may direct."
"[The] bill of rights [should provide] clearly and without the aid of sophisms for... the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787.
"The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." Prime Minister Winston Churchill.(Thanks to UT for providing quote)
Let's review "American Values".
YOUR PROPERTY AND PERSON ARE SUBJECT TO SEARCH AND SEIZURE AT ANYTIME AND ANYWHERE.
YOU DO NOT HAVE A RIGHT FOR ANY TYPE OF JUDICIAL REVIEW.
EVERYTHING YOU SAY CAN BE USED AGAINST YOU IN ANYWAY DEEMED BY THE AUTHORITIES.
IF YOU DO NOT TALK, YOU ARE SUBJECT TO TORTURE.
ANY EVIDENCE EXTRACTED THROUGH TORTURE OF ANOTHER CAN BE USED AGAINST YOU.
YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO FACE YOUR ACCUSSERS.
YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO SEE ANY EVIDENCE PERTAINING TO YOUR CASE, INCLUDING ANY FROM ANOTHER EXTRACTED THROUGH TORTURE.
IS THAT CLEAR? OR DO I HAVE TO REPORT YOU TO THE AUTHORITIES?
For those that lie or believe the lie that the Military Commissions Act only applies to non-Americans -
§ 948a. Definitions 2
In this chapter: 3
(1) UNLAWFUL ENEMY COMBATANT.—(A) The term ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ means—
"(ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense."
PDF link here