Even WASHINGTON TIMES opinion piece opposes Bush on habeas corpus

[pnwmom]

I was googling to get more information on the Military Commissions Act and was startled to find a very strong op-ed in the Washington Times opposing it.

http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20061008-101402-8020r.htm

SNIP

Amongthose alarmed, as I am, by this further expansion of executive powers by the Bush administration, is Jumana Musa, an Amnesty International lawyer. She told the Boston Globe (Sept. 28): "What if they had this after Sept. 11 (2001) when they picked up all kinds of folks on immigration charges and material-witness charges and tried them in secret immigration proceedings? "Those people," she continued, "were deported. Now...they could be detained indefinitely as enemy combatants."

Also disturbed by this legislation, championed by the president, is Democratic Rep. Doris Matsui . . . . Said Mrs. Matsui on National Public Radio (Sept. 27): "From my family's perspective, I know something about what can happen to the rights of Americans when the executive branch overreaches in a time of war." And this new, startling overreaching, in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, could also encompass American citizens transformed into enemy combatants because of "material support" of the enemy as unilaterally defined by the executive.

Arguing on the Senate floor against the revocation of habeas corpus, Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota spoke of Mitsuye Endo, who, at 22, was herded into a Japanese internment camp. Born and raised in this country, "She didn't speak Japanese, had never been to Japan and had a brother in the U.S. Army...on release, her plea to the courts (helped) lead to the unlocking of those camps and led to tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans being let out... 'With one woman's writ of habeas corpus' (and other such habeas writs), an awful chapter in our country's history soon came to an end."

Mr. McCain, after his involvement in the "compromise" with the president that led to this dangerous law, including the revocation of habeas corpus, said: "We're all winners. I'm very proud of what we've accomplished." When I think of the losers ahead, one person I will not support for the presidency is John McCain, a man whose principles are as flexible as Mr. Bush's pledge to protect our civil liberties.

[necso]

1. "Conservatives", libertarians,

social traditionalists, et al, have been herded like sheep by the neocons.

Shame!

[yurbud]

2. McCain said, "We're all winners," as they zip-tied his hands together and

hooded him, and attached the electrodes.

[tom_paine]

3. Fritz Thyssen all over again.

You think the Industrial Aristocracy is beginning to repent the tyrannical monsters they helped create? Maybe they are thinking that pauperizing and serf-izing the Middle Class sounded good, at first, but who's going to by their crap when that happens?

Are they, like Thyssen and the German Industrialists, coming to their awareness too late?

Time will tell.

[katty]

4. bush: I'm the decider-apparently, he is-destroying the Constitution