Story here. (I put “terrorist” in quotes because, until they’ve had their day in court, how do we know?) All but six of the Pub senators backed the filibuster. Kudos to those six. And may all those who did back the filibuster end their lives in solitary confinement a foreign prison wondering how they got there and what they’re charged with. This is a sad day for America.
And if we did, we’d be guilty of something much crueller: kidnapping foreigners and subjecting them to our courts. Which is far less honest.
Excellent work, these people have no habeas corpus rights.
Judge Hyde has spoken.
Was this meant as a joke?
Yet dishonestly, the OP has characterized the bill as “restoring” habeas rights to the detainees, as though the right existed but was taken away. In fact, they never had such a right; this bill, had it passed, would have indeed created such a right… but it didn’t pass.
I wonder why the side of the angels needs the help of fabrication and misdirection.
Dude, it’s a Pitting. Valid legal arguments not required. In any case, anybody who seven years ago tried to argue that prisoners held by American authorities anywhere in the world could have neither POW status nor lawful right of access to the courts would have been laughed, or possibly stoned, out of the room. By conservatives. This is only a question because the Bush Admin revived the archaic, unused-since-WWII “enemy combatant” classification. The word “restore” is appropriate.
No one supposes that these prisoners have no rights - we have treaty obligations that protect them.
However, constitutional rights do not extend to everyone in the world. This is pretty obvious, and I continually wonder why some folks can’t grasp this.
As far as I know, Republicans are still operating on the assumption that habeas corpus rights don’t even exist for US citizens (the AG claimed this outright, and the treatment of Padilla put it into action).
Granted, this requires them to violate both the constitution and common sense, but given that they deny US citizens these rights, why would you be surprised that they don’t want to extend them to foreigners?
What, those quaint ol’ Geneva Conventions?
Of course not. But why not to everyone in the custody of American authorities? The Bill of Rights, as we are often reminded on this Board by libertarians, is not a “grant” of rights (which are supposed, somehow, to exist independent of any manmade laws, dwelling in each individual like a ghost in a haunted house), but a set of restrictions on the government’s freedom to abridge them. And noncitizens resident here – lawfully or unlawfully – are generally acknowledged to have the same benefit of them as citizens have, the sole exceptions being political participation (voting, holding public office) and right of residence on American soil (citizens can be incarcerated but not under any circumstances deported). So – why should our government’s freedom of action to fuck with people’s indwelling rights and freedoms be any less restricted when dealing with furriners abroad who (for whatever reason) are in its hands without the protections of POW status under international law?
Um, there are reasons Alberto Gonzalez was such a terrible AG, and that was one of them.
Trying to extrapolate his beliefs to all Republicans is tenuous at best.
Ogdammit, now I’m slipping into GD mode . . . Ermm . . . May smiling, Martin, Bricker and Moto end their lives in a foreign prison, etc., and fuck yez all sideways, ye UnAmerican pig-dogs. There.
Have you read the article? It may be that the Washington Post has misrepresented the position, but the OP is only reflecting what the article he links to says.
Do you mean misdirection such as nitpicking legal fine points?
It’s nice to know that your system of values does not include any inalienable rights, but only those granted by a putatively beneficient power structure.
Do we believe in human rights, or don’t we? What we say in our founding documents, about all men being equal, inalienable rights, all of that, do you believe it? Because it is a statement of faith, you have no rational basis for such a thing: You say it, you believe it, you live it…or you don’t. You either believe that Achmed Camelhumper is your equal, or you don’t. You believe he has the same human rights as you, or you don’t. You believe that he has the same rights to prove his innocence, to be free from unreasonable detention and interrogation, or you don’t.
Its that simple.
The rights of United States citizens are constitutionally guaranteed, and apply solely to, you guessed it, United States citizens. For reasons known best to them, the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment distinguished between “citizens” and “persons” and guaranteed the latter, when they come under the authority of the United States in some way, certain specified rights.
I presume it’s not your position that no one who is not a U.S. citizen is a person at law, so I would assume that those guarantees do mean something. Obviously they do not mean that some drunk Nepali may not be treated by the Nepali police and courts in accordance with Nepali law without reference to the U.S. Constitution. But my assumption is that someone apprehended and detained by forces acting under the aegis of the U.S. government is a “person” within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, entitled to such things as a trial conducted with due process of law.
Umm, maybe. Often a trial isn’t appropriate. Certainly it isn’t for legitimate prisoners of war, which we are prevented by law from trying. The law does allow for their detention, however.
And this is a very big point - there are various classes of people, each of which has to be treated differently under the law. Applying the same procedures of justice to all of them wouldn’t be just at all, as I’m sure you would agree as a general rule.
I’m not for denying due process. But due process in civilian courts with full citizen constitutional protections would be terribly misguided. Due process in military courts designed to prosecute American servicemembers seems little better. A far better solution would be the military tribunals, and if we could stop bickering over false issues like this habeas corpus thing (IMHO) we might all be able to sit down and hammer out procedures for them that everyone could live with.
Forget Guantanamo and the CIA prisons. If we’re going to kidnap foreigners, put them in solitary confinement, torture them, stick fluorescent glow sticks up their asses, chain them to walls for days on end, stuff like that – well, that’s one thing. We can work on that some other time. But right now Bush, or any President, can snatch people off the streets, label them an enemy combatant, and throw the key away. A frightening amount of the populace and the professional class will apparently rush forward to defend such an act. Can we legislate that away? Some sort of bill? Nothing fancy, maybe just a post it note that says “No, really, the sixth and eighth amendments are pretty serious. No taksies backsies.”
They extend to anybody in the world dealt with by the U.S. Government. Or at least the Bill of Rights doesn’t say “except for non-citizens” anywhere.
Iraqi’s held (or shot by) by British troops are protected by the European Human Rights Act and have access to the UK legal system. And so they should.
No organisation - particularly an armed one occupying a foreign country - should be accountable only to itself. And as has been pointed out human rights are human rights - not granted leeway by a dispensing authority.
Once again I am struck by the tighty-righty eagerness to nitpick and wriggle out of the very constitution they pretend to revere and the ideals of the country they effect to love.