Leahy Amendment Fails

The vote was 56-43, short of the 60 ayes needed to cut off debate. The result is that detainees in military prisons are denied the right to protest that detention in federal court. What really gets me is the argument BushCo and the far right put up against the measure which is that habeas corpus has to be banned “. . . to stem the tide of legal protests flooding civilian courts.” – Springfield News-Leader, Nation/World Thursday, September 20, 2007 p. 9A

So . . ., we have arrested so many people that to grant them habeas corpus would flood the courts, therefore we can’t grant them habeas corpus. Now there’s a great line of reasoning - we have created a problem too big to solve, so we won’t apply the solution.

Never mind that they might be innocent. Never mind that they have served over five years without charges or trial.

Maybe we should apply that principle more broadly. As the good Republicans that we are, why don’t we officially (as opposed to the present tacit policy) declare that we have created so many poor people that we can no longer offer them any more social services? Or with regard to unemployment, we could declare that we have so many people out of work that we must abolish unemployment compensation and close down the state employment agencies.

Okay. Following that reasoning, why don’t we refuse to provide more funding for weapons development on the grounds that we already have enough to blow the world to smithereens? Or maybe we could cut off funding for the Iraq war on the grounds that escalation is the administration’s preferred approach and we can’t recruit enough soldiers to avoid having to station people in the war zone without a break?

Oh no, we can’t use that one. We just voted down a measure that would have required us to give people as much time in the states as we demand that they serve in Iraq, so if it’s okay that they have to serve 15 months for every 12 months off, we’ll just start leaving them there for the duration.

The issue is not national security, it is morality. If the U.S. cannot bring charges, it must release prisoners. Things are rarely that black and white, but in this case they are. We should not allow our nation to be a place in which people’s liberty can be taken away with no legal basis.

Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR