Observed by Juan Cole:
http://www.juancole.com/2006/10/year-one-of-empire-bush-resistance-is.htmlYear One of the Empire
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This law creates two classes of persons inside the United States, citizens with rights and non-citizens (12 million persons? Equivalent to the entire state of Michigan!) without rights.
Basically, Bush can issue them what the French kings used to call lettres de cachet.:
' In French history, lettres de cachet were letters signed by the king of France, countersigned by one of his ministers, and closed with the royal seal, or cachet. They contained orders directly from the king, often to enforce arbitrary actions and judgements that could not be appealed. . .'We Americans made a revolution against such arbitrary practices of the French and other Empires.
Article 1, Section 9 of the US Constitution says, "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."I look out my window. I don't see a general Rebellion or an invasion by a foreign power. The conditions, under which the right of the imprisoned to demand that a court establish whether there are genuine grounds to hold him is suspended, are absent.
The law is unconstitutional.
Moreover, our founding documents did not admit of a distinction among human beings with regard to rights. The Declaration of Independence says:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."All men here means all human beings. It says they are all created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights. All of them. Not some of them....
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