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Originally Posted by smooth
for your own edification, dragonlich, I haven't ever heard of rightwing politics speaking about a right of safety as secured by the constitution. most of their politics hinges on the rhetoric of personal responsibility; so goes with one's safety. witness weapons control debates, work environment legislation, and even speech/expression limitation debates, among others. rights debates are a slippery animal in the states--especially for rightwing rhetoric since its politics has a contradictory stance in regards to capital and populism.
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That's where the US differs from Europe, I presume. We have MANY right-wing politicians talking about the right of safety, as opposed to the rights of criminals to privacy, for one thing.
I would assume that the Bush administration is holding these terrorists to make Americans safer. So that'd lead to the "right of safety" thing.
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Originally Posted by smooth
I reject out of hand your comparison between court proceedings against suspected terrorists and the OJ Simpson murder trial. I attribute your comments in that reference as hyperbole; I think that if that's your level of analysis of our judicial processes then you are employing a very crude method, to say the least.
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It was an example of how things can go wrong in the judicial system. Fact is, there instances where "obviously" guilty people go free because of their fame/money/connections, or simply because their lawyers are very, very good. There are also many examples of cases where people get convicted, and later proven innocent.
I have given examples of terror-trials in the Netherlands, and how they have failed to get a conviction, because there is so little firm evidence. After all, these terrorists usually haven't actually blown people up yet. All you can do is try and prove they were planning to do nasty things, something made very difficult by the nature of terrorism and terrorists. The evidence usually consists of extremists tapes and videos (free speech) and plans/photographs of supposed targets ("planning or been on a holiday"). As for witnesses... usually terrorists don't rat on their friends, and even if they do, they're known terrorists, trying to frame an innocent man - not very difficult to dismiss. In a non-jury trial, it is *very* difficult to convict people on the basis of that evidence.
Perhaps it's possible to give these people trials by jury, because that'd undoubtedly lead to a high proportion of convictions. But then again... the results would be mostly emotional, and we know how that works. The terrorists won't be getting a fair trial, they'll be assumed guilty from the start. Hey, but at least they'll have had a trial; it'll be okay to lock them up for life then, eh? So what if it later turns out that a lot of them were indeed innocent...
But go ahead, prove me wrong. Show me the errors. I'm always willing to learn, and if you have some insight into why terror trials would be both fair and would lead to convictions based on hardly any evidence... be my guest.