“R.I.P. Habeus Corpus, 1215 – 2006” from jwz
The Military Commission Act has been signed.
President Bush this morning proudly signed into law a bill that critics consider one of the most un-American in the nation’s long history.
The new law vaguely bans torture — but makes the administration the arbiter of what is torture and what isn’t. It allows the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant. It suspends the Great Writ of habeas corpus for detainees. It allows coerced testimony at trial. It immunizes retroactively interrogators who may have engaged in torture.
All but one of the items on the bill of rights has been affected by this new law.
ACLU:
The president can now – with the approval of Congress – indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions. Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act.
“One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America. He didn’t get his wish.” George W. Bush, upon signing the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law.
