The Road to hell...
- Thread starter ITEOTWAWKI
- Start date
Some would disagree.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/10/10/olbermann-why-does-habeas-corpus-hate-america/
badbob
ITEOTWAWKI
Moderator
Unless you step out of line, your rights are protected.
Desert Heat
New member
I bet you the government has made people disappear, you just don't know about it.
Pump them for information and either ship them back home or throw them in the tank. Who cares where they are from as long as they aren't citizens.
No I don't. Odds are if they are found on the battlefield against us, they probably are people that aren't wanted back in the first place. However this is all beside the point. Whether other countries want their citizens back has nothing to do with the fact that the constitution doesn't confer any rights on non-citizens much less enemy combatants.
I can buy one in Tijuana. So what. Having a passport doesn't necessarily make you a citizen. If he is a citizen then he gets all the fun stuff that citizens get. He'll need it as he'll hopefully be tried for treason and executed.
Who said anything about giving up rights? This is about creating rights where they are none. American citizens no matter where they are, still retain all the priviliges and rights under the constitution. I don't care whether you had tea with osama last week. If you're a citizen then due process it is. If you ain't then its another story.
Define the "battlefield" in this war on terror. Please. You seem to imply that the battlefield is fairly limited.
Like Padilla? Like Hamdi?
So, based on the whim of the executive, people anywhere outside the U.S. can be suspected of terrorism, and held as enemy combatants irrespective of their country of citizenship? And if their country wants them back, the U.S. can legitimately just say, "shove it?"
Yes. You are making the argument of whether it is good policy. I'm simply stating whether its constitutionally permissible. Whether I think its a good idea or not isn't the point. What is the point is all these morons who complain about how "our" rights are being "eroded" when that simply isn't the case. If something is in accord with the constitution then it can't be eroding anyone's rights.
ITEOTWAWKI
Moderator
Oh, well in that case. 
My beef with this is that it also applies to U.S. citizens even if they're within the U.S. Fix that little 'oversight' (I'm being charitable here) and I've got no beef with this other than the fact that it's strategically foolish.
Stage2,
Since you seem to be the only guy around here that understands the issue (heavy sarcasm), please be so good as to show me where this law exempts American citizens on American soil.
Stage2,
Since you seem to be the only guy around here that understands the issue (heavy sarcasm), please be so good as to show me where this law exempts American citizens on American soil.
The fact that it specifically includes American Citizens is something that should be of concern to all of us. With each stroke of the pen this administration takes away more and more of our liberties in the name of security. In reality , it seams to me the only ones they're making more secure , are themselves.
Yeah don't let that little thing like the law get in your way.
With half my brain behind my back. From the bill itself....
§948c. Persons subject to military commissions ‘‘Any alien unlawful enemy combatant is subject to trial by military commission under this chapter.
‘‘(a) JURISDICTION.—A military commission under this chapter shall have jurisdiction to try any offense made punishable by this chapter or the law of war when committed by an alien unlawful enemy combatant before, on, or after September 11, 2001.
‘‘(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.
And how do they define alien....
‘‘(3) ALIEN.—The term ‘alien’ means a person who is not a citizen of the United States.
This took 5 minutes on the internet. 5 minutes. Those of you who are sitting here with your little bash fest are either lazy, dishonest or both. If you are an american citizen then you AREN'T going to go before a military tribunal and habeas won't be suspended for you.
Yet another example of those on the left not letting the facts get in the way of a good smear campaign.
See, now that’s just looking for something to get pissed at Bush about. Even the most cursory of research would have revealed that per the law itself:
Statements like you made really just highlight your spiteful dislike for the current administration. Seriously.
I have a personal policy of not ignoring anybody, as I think its rude, but the recent spat of statements like the one you made sure make me question that policy.
Edited to add:
I see Stage 2 also has the high level searching skills required to figure out what the law actually says, and beat me to posting it here.
So if a guy moves here from say...Sweden and decides to publish a small local newspaper, can he be arrested because freedom of speech and freedom of the press don't apply to him? He's only a legal resident but I guess the cops can still bust his door down since the fourth amendment doesn't apply to him. Oh and while in jail he can be held indefinately, beaten and tortured because the little rule against cruel and unusual punishment just doesn't apply to non-citizens.
Is that how you want things?
What I want has nothing to do with this discussion. All of you keep trying to change the subject. The issue is whether or not this new piece of legislation infringes or even affects our rights. As I posted above, it clearly does not.
Too many people have a knee jerk reaction to anything Bush does, or let others in the media do the thinking for them. This thread is a perfect example of that. Several here have come to a conclusion without so much as even looking at the bill. In my line of work thats called malpractice. Here its just called ignorance.
As for your specific example, the guy from sweden would be considered an LPR, or legal permanent resident. As a result some of the due process protections apply to him. These protections have been granted by statute however and not the constitution. As a result, they can be freely changed by the legislature on a whim.
I believe this one statement applies to all those from foreign lands, including those who choose to attack us.
But I am confused over the term "Unlawful Combatant".
What is an Unlawful Combatant?
Does a formal declaration of war need to be made before you can become a Lawful Combatant?
How about Vietnam or Korea, no declaration of war there, and no "Unlawful Combatants", either. Panama? Nope. Somalia? Nope. LA? Nope.
I'm kinda thinking that there is no such thing as an "Unlawful Combatant".
Just plain old criminal types from foreign lands, murderers who follow a twisted and primitive religious dogma under the incredibly silent blessing of those who claim to know and to teach its tenets.
And that makes all of them subject to the quote above.
Hmmm , lets see what a professor of law , Majorie Cohn thinks about this ...
Before you try to discredit her professional opinion on the bill take into consideration that she is not only a proffesro of law but also president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.
So , if we're going to attempt to interpret law here ... I think I'd take her word over anything else I've heard to the contrary thus far.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bush Can Now Grab,
Imprison ANY US
Citizens He Chooses
By Marjorie Cohn
Professor, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
10-2-6
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."
Bush & Co. has portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens to protect us against terrorism. Frightened they might lose their majority in Congress in the November elections, the Republicans rammed the bill through Congress with little substantive debate.
Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush's list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.
The bill also strips habeas corpus rights from detained aliens who have been declared enemy combatants. Congress has the constitutional power to suspend habeas corpus only in times of rebellion or invasion. The habeas-stripping provision in the new bill is unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will likely say so when the issue comes before it.
Although more insidious, this law follows in the footsteps of other unnecessarily repressive legislation. In times of war and national crisis, the government has targeted immigrants and dissidents.
In 1798, the Federalist-led Congress, capitalizing on the fear of war, passed the four Alien and Sedition Acts to stifle dissent against the Federalist Party's political agenda. The Naturalization Act extended the time necessary for immigrants to reside in the U.S. because most immigrants sympathized with the Republicans.
The Alien Enemies Act provided for the arrest, detention and deportation of male citizens of any foreign nation at war with the United States. Many of the 25,000 French citizens living in the U.S. could have been expelled had France and America gone to war, but this law was never used. The Alien Friends Act authorized the deportation of any non-citizen suspected of endangering the security of the U.S. government; the law lasted only two years and no one was deported under it.
The Sedition Act provided criminal penalties for any person who wrote, printed, published, or spoke anything "false, scandalous and malicious" with the intent to hold the government in "contempt or disrepute." The Federalists argued it was necessary to suppress criticism of the government in time of war. The Republicans objected that the Sedition Act violated the First Amendment, which had become part of the Constitution seven years earlier. Employed exclusively against Republicans, the Sedition Act was used to target congressmen and newspaper editors who criticized President John Adams.
Subsequent examples of laws passed and actions taken as a result of fear-mongering during periods of xenophobia are the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Red Scare following World War I, the forcible internment of people of Japanese descent during World War II, and the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act).
During the McCarthy period of the 1950s, in an effort to eradicate the perceived threat of communism, the government engaged in widespread illegal surveillance to threaten and silence anyone who had an unorthodox political viewpoint. Many people were jailed, blacklisted and lost their jobs. Thousands of lives were shattered as the FBI engaged in "red-baiting."
One month after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft rushed the U.S.A. Patriot Act through a timid Congress. The Patriot Act created a crime of domestic terrorism aimed at political activists who protest government policies, and set forth an ideological test for entry into the United States.
In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the internment of Japanese and Japanese-American citizens in Korematsu v. United States. Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent that the ruling would "lie about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."
That day has come with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It provides the basis for the President to round-up both aliens and U.S. citizens he determines have given material support to terrorists. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of undesirables.
In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Louis Brandeis cautioned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." Seventy-three years later, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, speaking for a zealous President, warned Americans "they need to watch what they say, watch what they do."
We can expect Bush to continue to exploit 9/11 to strip us of more of our liberties. Our constitutional right to dissent is in serious jeopardy. Benjamin Franklin's prescient warning should give us pause: "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."
Before you try to discredit her professional opinion on the bill take into consideration that she is not only a proffesro of law but also president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.
So , if we're going to attempt to interpret law here ... I think I'd take her word over anything else I've heard to the contrary thus far.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bush Can Now Grab,
Imprison ANY US
Citizens He Chooses
By Marjorie Cohn
Professor, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
10-2-6
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."
Bush & Co. has portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens to protect us against terrorism. Frightened they might lose their majority in Congress in the November elections, the Republicans rammed the bill through Congress with little substantive debate.
Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush's list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.
The bill also strips habeas corpus rights from detained aliens who have been declared enemy combatants. Congress has the constitutional power to suspend habeas corpus only in times of rebellion or invasion. The habeas-stripping provision in the new bill is unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will likely say so when the issue comes before it.
Although more insidious, this law follows in the footsteps of other unnecessarily repressive legislation. In times of war and national crisis, the government has targeted immigrants and dissidents.
In 1798, the Federalist-led Congress, capitalizing on the fear of war, passed the four Alien and Sedition Acts to stifle dissent against the Federalist Party's political agenda. The Naturalization Act extended the time necessary for immigrants to reside in the U.S. because most immigrants sympathized with the Republicans.
The Alien Enemies Act provided for the arrest, detention and deportation of male citizens of any foreign nation at war with the United States. Many of the 25,000 French citizens living in the U.S. could have been expelled had France and America gone to war, but this law was never used. The Alien Friends Act authorized the deportation of any non-citizen suspected of endangering the security of the U.S. government; the law lasted only two years and no one was deported under it.
The Sedition Act provided criminal penalties for any person who wrote, printed, published, or spoke anything "false, scandalous and malicious" with the intent to hold the government in "contempt or disrepute." The Federalists argued it was necessary to suppress criticism of the government in time of war. The Republicans objected that the Sedition Act violated the First Amendment, which had become part of the Constitution seven years earlier. Employed exclusively against Republicans, the Sedition Act was used to target congressmen and newspaper editors who criticized President John Adams.
Subsequent examples of laws passed and actions taken as a result of fear-mongering during periods of xenophobia are the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Red Scare following World War I, the forcible internment of people of Japanese descent during World War II, and the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act).
During the McCarthy period of the 1950s, in an effort to eradicate the perceived threat of communism, the government engaged in widespread illegal surveillance to threaten and silence anyone who had an unorthodox political viewpoint. Many people were jailed, blacklisted and lost their jobs. Thousands of lives were shattered as the FBI engaged in "red-baiting."
One month after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft rushed the U.S.A. Patriot Act through a timid Congress. The Patriot Act created a crime of domestic terrorism aimed at political activists who protest government policies, and set forth an ideological test for entry into the United States.
In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the internment of Japanese and Japanese-American citizens in Korematsu v. United States. Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent that the ruling would "lie about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."
That day has come with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It provides the basis for the President to round-up both aliens and U.S. citizens he determines have given material support to terrorists. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of undesirables.
In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Louis Brandeis cautioned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." Seventy-three years later, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, speaking for a zealous President, warned Americans "they need to watch what they say, watch what they do."
We can expect Bush to continue to exploit 9/11 to strip us of more of our liberties. Our constitutional right to dissent is in serious jeopardy. Benjamin Franklin's prescient warning should give us pause: "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."
AHENRY ... GOOD WORK . TOO BAD YOU MISSED THIS SEPERATION in a sloppily written document.
-------------------
``(3) Lawful enemy combatant.--The term `lawful enemy
combatant' means an individual who is--
``(A) a member of the regular forces of a State party
engaged in hostilities against the United States;
``(B) a member of a militia, volunteer corps, or organized
resistance movement belonging to a State party engaged in
such hostilities, which are under responsible command, wear a
fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance, carry
their arms openly, and abide by the law of war; or
``(C) a member of a regular armed force who professes
allegiance to a government engaged in such hostilities, but
not recognized by the United States.
``(4) Unlawful enemy combatant.--The term `unlawful enemy
combatant' means an individual engaged in hostilities against
the United States who is not a lawful enemy combatant.
-----------
hos·til·i·ty (h-stl-t) Pronunciation Key
n. pl. hos·til·i·ties
The state of being hostile; antagonism or enmity.
A hostile act.
hostilities Acts of war; overt warfare.
------------
From the above definition of hostility , it could easily be used to supress any dissent against an out of control government. Something the US CONSTITUION was specifically supposed to protect.
At best we can say this is a very wrecklessly written document that CAN be interpreted to include American Citizens.
-------------------
``(3) Lawful enemy combatant.--The term `lawful enemy
combatant' means an individual who is--
``(A) a member of the regular forces of a State party
engaged in hostilities against the United States;
``(B) a member of a militia, volunteer corps, or organized
resistance movement belonging to a State party engaged in
such hostilities, which are under responsible command, wear a
fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance, carry
their arms openly, and abide by the law of war; or
``(C) a member of a regular armed force who professes
allegiance to a government engaged in such hostilities, but
not recognized by the United States.
``(4) Unlawful enemy combatant.--The term `unlawful enemy
combatant' means an individual engaged in hostilities against
the United States who is not a lawful enemy combatant.
-----------
hos·til·i·ty (h-stl-t) Pronunciation Key
n. pl. hos·til·i·ties
The state of being hostile; antagonism or enmity.
A hostile act.
hostilities Acts of war; overt warfare.
------------
From the above definition of hostility , it could easily be used to supress any dissent against an out of control government. Something the US CONSTITUION was specifically supposed to protect.
At best we can say this is a very wrecklessly written document that CAN be interpreted to include American Citizens.