RIP Habeas Corpus

A new law has been voted by the U.S. Congress which will give brand new powers to the President.

George Bush will decide -- in secret if he chooses -- what methods of interrogation he considers to be abusive, a New York Times editorial reported. This, of course, is the same man who already has authorized secret prisons overseas and whose underlings already have subjected suspected terrorists to forms of abuse ranging from simulated drowning to being stripped naked and left standing for days in “stress positions.” And that was before anyone passed a law giving him permission.
This law gives permission at wholesale prices. The Times reported it also:
* Allows coerced evidence, if deemed “reliable” by a judge.
* Limits the definition of torture so severely that it “would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.”
* Could subject legal U.S. residents and foreigners living in their own countries to arrest and “indefinite detention.”

Friday’s Washington Post reports: “The (law) empowers the executive branch to detain indefinitely anyone (emphasis added) it determines to have ‘purposefully and materially’ supported anti-U.S. hostilities.”
Could anyone mean – well -- anyone? After all, it is the executive branch under this law that is entitled to pull people off the street. And with no trial required and no need to file charges, who is to say whether that executive branch would have good cause or any cause for doing so? How would we, the public, find out? There are no checks, no balances, no legal processes to be followed.

The full article is here.


Posted in: _Democracy , _HumanRights , _USA