The Fascists Win Another Round
Right in their headline the legacy media™ gets it wrong: Senate Rejects Expanding Detainee Rights. A majority of the Senate voted to reverse an unconstitutional law that affects a basic right of everyone in the country. The Repubs filibustered the restoration of habeas corpus, the only right important enough to be in the body of the Constitution.
The 56-43 vote fell four shy of the 60 votes needed to cut off debate on the bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa.
…Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of the architects of the law, said the system includes checks and balances to determine whether a person is being held unlawfully. Granting a ban on habeas corpus petitions would allow terrorism suspects to go “judge shopping” around U.S. courts to find a sympathetic ear, he said.
Added Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.: “Never has such an unprecedented legal right been granted to a prisoner of war or detainee.”
Graham told a blatant lie. You can’t shop around, if you apply in the wrong court you lose automatically. Kyl neglects to mention that there is no precedent in American law for “detainee,” a new classification dreamed up by the Hedgemony.
They refuse to admit they don’t like the Constitutional system or the basic rights enjoyed in the United States.
12 comments
Well, they aren’t prisoners of war, are they? We’d be fine with them being prisoners of war, actually. Either that or charge them as criminals, but this invented “detainees” status is infinitely capable of metaphorical substitution. Never has a flibbertygib been so flubbed.
Enemy combatants? Non-enemy combatants? Enemy non-combatants? Flibberty foo.
They are entitled to Prisoner of War status under the Geneva conventions.
That’s what these people refuse to admit – if there’s a war, they are prisoners of war and their detention falls under the Geneva Conventions. If there is no war, they are criminals and have all of the rights of criminals.
The way they are going about it, it might be impossible to convict the real criminals among them.
They keep looking for short-cuts when it would be easier to do things properly, and the rubberstampers in Congress have been going along with this crap.
That’s because the real criminals are in the White House.
They should just attach them to House bills and pass them. Let’s stop with the theater unless Reid makes them actually filibuster.
Isn’t “prolonged standing” one of the techniques the fascists authorized? I wouldn’t chain anyone to the floor and make them stand against their will, but if they want to filibuster, stand and deliver.
“They are entitled to Prisoner of War status under the Geneva conventions.” – whig
Precisely.
“Enemy combatant”? T’aint no such thing. And the taint is on our government.
Of all the pernicious things this Congress has allowed the Bushists to get away with, the willful denial of habeas corpus may prove in the long run to be one of the worst.
And this status review tribunals crap is worse than nothing.
They seek only to place an imprimatur of legitimacy on the illegal detentions.
Now Donald Rumsfeld, him I would not mind denying a chair during the testimony we’d like him to provide.
They can’t even convince the military lawyers that this is valid system, but the Senate doesn’t seem to notice.