Come Back To The Five And Dime, Habeas Corpus, Habeas Corpus

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent post in today's Salon about the need for Congressional Democrats to restore habeas corpus, and soon. He argues that it was in large part done away with (through the passage of the Military Commissions Act last September) because of Democratic spinelessness and cowardice in the face of the 2006 elections -- too many Dems were afraid of being labeled "soft on terror," even though the ones who were silent or who went along with the passage of that heinous act were still labeled as such afterward -- and so it is now incumbent on them to rectify their error and rescind the worst parts of that bill. I think he's absolutely right, and that restoring habeas should have been at the top of Nancy Pelosi's and Harry Reid's priority lists when Congress first came into session.

Here's Glenn:

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is, without question, the single worst law enacted during the Bush presidency, and is one of the most destructive laws passed in the last several decades. It is not merely a bad law. It vests in the President the power to detain people indefinitely with no meaningful opportunity to contest the government's accusations. That is the very power the Founders sought first and foremost to prohibit.

More significantly, whether a country permits its political leaders to imprison people arbitrarily and with no process is one of the few defining attributes dividing free and civilized countries from lawless tyrannies. Or, as Thomas Jefferson put it in his 1789 letter to Thomas Paine: "I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." To vest the President with the power to imprison people indefinitely with no charges is fundamentally to transform the type of country we are.

House Democrats are apparently now debating whether to vote on a bill to restore habeas corpus. Matt Stoller provides some of the legislative details and information needed to pressure them to do so, and he explains why quick action is required. This morning, The New York Times and even The Washington Post editorialized in favor of habeas restoration. It would be a profound -- and truly inexcusable -- abdication of Democrats' responsibilities for them to do anything other then devote full-scale efforts to restoring habeas corpus...

Needless to say, fear of appearing "soft on terrorism" is the primary impediment to habeas restoration. That fear is absurd. The Republicans' principal weapon in 2006 was the fear-mongering claim that Democrats were weak on terrorism because they oppose warrantless eavesdropping, "coercive interrogations," and lawless detentions. And yet Republicans were crushed in that election. It's not 2002 any more; the country has tuned out those sorts of scare tactics and that manipulative weapon has been overused and is impotent.

Moreover, this is not a hard argument to make, but in order for it to be understood, the argument needs to be made. Americans understand instinctively that to allow someone to contest accusations against them is not tantamount to allowing them to go free. It is easily conveyed that a critical aspect for punishing terrorists is to ensure that we only punish actual terrorists but provide a process whereby innocent people are not wrongfully imprisoned for life. If Democrats engage that debate, rather than run from it again, it is not difficult to make that case.

I can't emphasize enough just how bad this law is, and what a fundamental difference it makes in who and what we are as a people and a nation. The loss of habeas corpus -- a right that has been in existence for some 900 years; the one right that allows anyone to challenge an accuser in court, to keep from being locked up forever on the abitrary and capricious whim of a tyrant, with no recourse -- is monumental. It completely redefines America. Habeas corpus is the single most fundamental right that any and all free people should enjoy and cherish. Instead, the 109th Congress shamelessly let George W. Bush wad it up like so much used Kleenex, toss it into a bin of burning trash and then piss on the ashes. If it's true, as Preznit No Rights For You says, that Islamic terrorists "hate us for our freedom," then I sure hope someone sent them all a copy of the MCA when it passed so that they can start loving us a little more soon.

Read the whole article, then contact your Congressional representatives and tell them to restore America to its former place as the land of the free. Otherwise we're all screwed, and maybe for good.