Ted the Penguin

Military Commissions Act of 2006

Normally, I’d put something is long under a cut; but not tonight. Not this.

From The Shape of Days;

I dare say that a murderer doesn’t deserve the right of habeas corpus either. But we respect it anyway. Because habeas corpus, as a legal and judicial tradition, serves to protect us from our own government. When we extend the right of habeas corpus to a convicted murderer, we’re not protecting him. We’re protecting ourselves.

We cannot be assured of the right of habeas corpus — of the right not to be arbitrarily imprisoned — unless we grant that right to everyone. Because if the government claims the authority to abolish habeas sometimes, then it grants itself the authority to abolish it any time. And suddenly we’re beholden again, beholden to a government that lets us roam free only because it suits its purposes to do so.

In case you haven’t been following, he’s talking about Bill S.3930, in the Senate anyway, which declares:

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.

This doesn’t suspend habeas corpus, as Jeff points out, but makes it not exist.

Habeas corpus isn’t a privilege that’s granted selectively. For seven hundred years, it has applied to everyone, everywhere who found himself in the custody of a court that respected the tradition. Habeas corpus isn’t something that you might or might not enjoy depending on the severity of the crime of which you’ve been accused. It’s an absolute right, absolute and unalienable, a right so dearly held that it was specifically enumerated in the Constitution itself by men who stood firmly opposed to enumerating rights at all.

The Constitution, apart from a few paragraphs defining things like the number of legislators and their terms of office and their qualifications to serve, consists almost entirely of a long list of denials. The Constitution tells the people what their government is not allowed to do.

…

Oh, not for everyone. No, only for non-citizens, and even then, only for non-citizens accused of terrorism. But the point is, this Congress asserted for itself the right to abolish habeas corpus period, even to a limited extent, even over a limited populace.

This is a power our government does not have. It is a power the authors of our Constitution went out of their way specifically to deny.

And it’s a power this Congress claimed anyway.

Those of you who know me also know I can’t write, so I won’t spend hours rehashing this into my own words and making it illegible. But I wholeheartedly agree with everything that he says. Up to and including the last part;

This cannot stand. Whether the Supreme Court overturns this law or not, I cannot in good conscience vote for or endorse any candidate to the Congress of the United States who supported or would have supported the abolition of this ancient and vital protection.

Luckily, though the bill passed, my senators didn’t vote for it. Did yours?