TheAgitator.com
You Want Gaffes? I’ve Gotcher’ Gaffe.
Friday, June 13th, 2008So the really alarming thing about this is not that John McCain objects to the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene. It’s not even that he breathlessly (and rather shamefully) lumps the decision in with cases like Dred Scott or Plessy v. Ferguson.
No, the truly frightening thing about McCain’s response to Boumediene is that the Republican nominee for president doesn’t know what “habeas corpus” means.
Good God, man.
Wow, I think even Bush knows what habeas corpus means… he’d have to in order to deny our right to it.
How has Bush denied your right to habeas corpus? I’ve got to hear this.
I hope that McCain’s senility kicks in a little harder prior to the election. The last two R’s didn’t until they were already voted in.
How has Bush denied your right to habeas corpus?
Does he have to violate mine for me to care?
I think it was Dahlia Lithwick who wrote (on slate.com) that “habeas corpus is Latin for ‘get me outta here.’”
In fairness, conditions of confinement (amounting to a violation of a constitutional right) can be challenged via a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, although people typically think of the Great Writ as a challenge to unlawful detention.
McCain’s a scare-monger, nevertheless.
Last I heard they didn’t really stress habeas corpus in the Naval Academy or at officer or flight school (which I believe was the end of his formal education), he was a self-admitted indifferent student (sort of like our current President), and he doesn’t strike me as somebody who particularly cares about the finer points of individual rights (based on the legislation he’s sponsored) so it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest if he has no idea what habeas corpus is.
No, he doesn’t have to violate yours for you to care. I was questioning Matt’s statement and I’ll ask again. How has he violated our right to habeas corpus? I think the Supreme Court’s ruling on this is pure BS.
Jim,
It’s an all or nothing type thing. The executive being able to violate anyone’s habeas corpus rights means that no such rights exist.
Jim, my husband agrees with you and I can’t for the life of me understand why you two dislike the decision.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus
“The November 13, 2001, Presidential Military Order gave the President of the United States the power to detain suspects, suspected of connection to terrorists or terrorism as an unlawful combatant. As such, it was asserted that a person could be held indefinitely without charges being filed against him or her, without a court hearing, and without entitlement to a legal consultant. Many legal and constitutional scholars contended that these provisions were in direct opposition to habeas corpus and the United States Bill of Rights.”
And from the US Constitution, Article 1 Section 9:
“The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.”
Then go read the Military Commissions Act:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Commissions_Act_of_2006
Simply put, if you believe that Bush and company have done no wrong, are acting in good faith, and are following the Constitution, then it will be impossible to get you to see what is obvious to the rest of us.
If you believe otherwise, then the simple answer is that you can’t trust government to slap a label of enemy combatant on the appropriate person and with hard RELIABLE evidence, that has been independently verified, and so minimizes the chance that people are kidnapped in the name of empire.
Just the fact that a large percentage of the detainees at Guantanamo have been let go after being held for YEARS with no charges indicates it was all a “kidnap people, who cares about evidence” approach, and THAT should be sufficient to make you angry.
I think he knows what it means, I think he made a mistake. German POW’s did not have access to our courts, should these guys? I think so, but I also think that under certain circumstances the President has the right and responsiblity to act as guardian of the country.
Jim - Read #10.
Lee - Thanks.
Simple Bronwyn. The SC ruling opens a can of worms that was better left closed. Everything depends on what the status of the Gitmo detainees is. If they are POW’s we are forbidden by the Geneva Convention from sending them to trial. If they are not POW’s then we are free to try them as criminals and there is the possibility that they can be sentenced to death. If we send them to trial, it could be considered a violation of international law, even if it isn’t we set a precedent by which any future US military personel taken prisioner can be tried. The SC took the cheap way out. It made no ruling on the status of detainees, it made no ruling on which Court was to conduct the trials and it didn’t even say that they have to be tried. It just said that they have the right habeas corpus. Their ruling is like changing the tires on a car with a blown engine.
So…..are you saying that the US Constitution applies to EVERYONE in the world, even if they’re not complying with treaties that MOST civilized countries in the world signed on to decades ago, ANYWHERE in the world?
Talk about arrogance……..
Look at it this way: the constitution does not grant citizens rights. Rather, it establishes prohibitions on the United States’ government’s actions. Therefore, it doesn’t matter whether you are a citizen, enemy combatant or someone in-between. It also does not matter where the government action happens.
By the sheer act of saying a person can’t seek habeas corpus, the government has acted unlawfully.
The U.S. constitution applies to the actions of the U.S. government, and is supposed to limit what those actions may be.
I do think it’s scary that McCain considers a decision *giving people rights* to be “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”
That’s the American spirit — rights are a dangerous thing to give!
Thanks Matt.
The problem is that nobody has determined the exact status of the Gitmo detainees. If they are determined to be POW’s then we can’t send them to trial under international and habeas corpus doesn’t apply. If they are not POW’s, then it does apply and they can be tried and can possibly face the death penalty. The SC resolved nothing.
So if this is a war on terror then shouldn’t prisoners of said war be subject to Geneva Convention rules? You can’t have it both ways. Frankly, I thought our government was above skulking about in the dark like this. But, as has been proven to me time and again in recent years, that just isn’t the case. A sad state of affairs when we act like fascists to ‘further the cause of freedom’. It just makes me ill beyond belief.
People aren’t given rights by government, you are given rights by your Creator, or simply by existing if you don’t believe in a Creator. Once you think that government, in the form of politicians putting ink on paper, can grant you a right, that also means they can take it away. It also means you think they are on a higher plane than you, and you are a lowly individual, thus they can rightfully tell you what you can and can’t do.
Most non-lawyers do not know that “habeas corpus” (literally, Latin for “having the body”) means having a legally sufficient minimum of evidence to justify an arrest or a charge. If that isn’t close to what the phrase means, all I can say is that I am not a lawyer.
However, critics of the decision are correct in that the right of habeas corpus has never been extended to POW’s or to alleged illegal combatants. I write “alleged” because SCOTUS threw out the just established military tribunals which would have determined such status for the Gitmo prisoners, among other issues.
chsw
And very relevant to the MCA, you currently have Marines “training” in Indiana. This is just practice for martial law and taking over local police forces. What happens in this “training” if you refuse to stop at the illegal checkpoint, refuse to illegally be searched, and refuse to illegally be disarmed?
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/52319
Mr Collins apparently learns about the Geneva Convention from Fox or some similar source of stupid ‘information’.
The Geneva Conventions with it’s legal history and interpretations are easily googled. Here is what I learned:
GC #3 states plainly that ‘militias’ and ‘volunteer corps’ that meet basic criteria have the complete set of protections afforded every captured soldier. (The criteria are things like carrying arms openly and following a chain of command; the Taliban & AQ easily qualify.)
International Law (the ‘International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia’ is apparently the latest example) plainly states: “…nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law.”
And finally, GC #3, Article 85, paragraph 9: “Captured members of enemy armed forces who have committed war crimes cannot thereafter claim the status of Prisoner of War.”
So instead of determining which of the Gitmo detainees might have forfeited Geneva Convention protections and prosecuting them quickly, routinely and legally, our own gov’t kept up to 700 people in cages. Their treatment has shamed the US and made our international esteem into universal approbation.
And for what it’s worth, thinking of Justice Scalia’s fearful prediction that American’s will die because of this decision—the US Constitution does NOT give the US Gov’t the responsibilty to see that I do not die. The US Govt has the responsibility to protect my liberties as defined by the Constitution. So go hide under your own bed and deal with your own fears in your own way, Judge, and leave me with my Constitution even in a dangerous world where I might be killed.
McCain will have plenty of time to read up on the habeas corpus stuff later. Right now he has to concentrate on how he’s going to win the war with Iran.
John McC put it very well -
“the US Constitution does NOT give the US Gov’t the responsibilty to see that I do not die. The US Govt has the responsibility to protect my liberties as defined by the Constitution.”
I agree.
A Republican president and a Republican congress decided it is okay to lock people away forever; and so many of the weinies on here seem to think it is okay–I’m again chagrined to be American…
Jim - If they have no right to writ of habeas corpus then how are we going to determine their status?