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Originally Posted by roachboy
well, i stand by the claim that the problem was the climate of hysteria generated by the idiot response to 9/11/2001 and maintained for political purposes through 2005 at the least. you can still see the traces of the division between those who think within that frame and those who dont in the distance separating scalia's minority opinion from the majority opinion.
to take this a step further: i see nothing automatic in the american system of checks--i see this decision as a reflection of the dissolution of the environment they worked to maintain. collective hysteria remains a huge and frightening possibility, a permanent problem. and the contemporary ideological apparatus--which we call "the media"--makes such hysteria a constant possibility.
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rb....it is interesting that in the UK, "conservatives", actually are...conservative, and they recognize that the tactics of those who claim to be "conservatives" in the US are actually those of scare mongering, power grabbing propagandists:
Former British PM, John Major, is objecting to a revision in law that would extend imprisonment without charges or a hearing before a magistrate from the current 28 days max., to 42 days. In the US, prisoners have been held for as long as 6-1/2 years, under these same circumstances...no hearing, no charges, and four SCOTUS justices appointed by "conservative" US presidents, and the current president himself, view it as just and AMERICAN...
it's not....it is a failure of the president to honor his oath to "uphold and defend the Consitution", and of these four judges, as well.....
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle4075503.ece
June 6, 2008
42-day detention: the threat to our liberty
The Government's plan is simply part of an assault on our ancient rights
John Major
The Government's legislation to permit 42 days pre-charge detention brings to the fore the wider question of civil liberties. In their response to the security threat ministers have dragged us ever closer to a society in which ancient rights are seriously damaged. I doubt this is the Government's intention, but it is the effect. It began with Iraq.
The invasion of Iraq was justified by overegging the threat of Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction - perhaps that error was genuine.
But the case for war was embellished by linking the Iraqi regime to the 9/11 attacks on New York - for which there is not one shred of evidence. As we moved towards war, that misinformation was compounded by the implication that Saddam's Iraq was a clear and present danger to the United Kingdom, which plainly it was not.
These actions damaged our reputation overseas. And, at home - on the back of the threat of terror and two serious incidents in London - they foreshadowed a political climate in which civil liberties are slowly being sacrificed. ...
....The Government has introduced measures to protect against terrorism. These go beyond anything contemplated when Britain faced far more regular -- and no less violent -- assaults from the IRA. The justification of these has sometimes come close to scaremongering. . . .
The Government has been saying, in a catchy, misleading piece of spin: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." This is a demagogue's trick. We do have something to fear -- the total loss of privacy to an intrusive state with authoritarian tendencies. .....
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Quote:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7450627.stm
In his resignation statement, he said he feared 42 days was just the beginning and next "we'll next see 56 days, 70 days, 90 days".
But, he added: "In truth, 42 days is just one -- perhaps the most salient example -- of the insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms."
He listed the growth of the "database state," government "snooping" ID cards, the erosion of jury trials and other issues.
"This cannot go on. It must be stopped and for that reason today I feel it is incumbent on me to make a stand," said Mr Davis....
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....and those who claim to be conservative in the US, display all of the worst tendencies, motives, and ridiculous cluelessness of their "poster boy", Lindsey Graham. Maybe it's just a matter of constantly responding that they are talking and acting "UN-American", when they show such disdain for the courts and the Constitution...now, it's one, two, three...what are we fighting for?
I thought that it was for freedom from arbitrary imprisonment by executive whim?
Quote:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/40899.html
* Posted on Thursday, June 12, 2008
Graham: Amend Constitution to overturn court's ruling
By James Rosen | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — A dejected Sen. Lindsey Graham blasted the Supreme Court's ruling Thursday on Guantanamo Bay detainees, calling it "dangerous and irresponsible."
The South Carolina Republican, who's also a military lawyer and a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, helped craft the Military Commissions Act and had confidently predicted that it would pass high court muster.
The Supreme Court repudiated Graham in a 5-4 decision, ruling that the 270 alleged terrorists being held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba have a constitutional right to challenge their detentions in federal courts.
"The court's ruling makes clear the legal rights given to al Qaida members today should exceed those provided to the Nazis during World War II," Graham said. "Our nation is at war. It's truly unfortunate the Supreme Court did not recognize and appreciate that fact."
The high court's decision was its third ruling in four years against the special powers that President Bush has claimed the executive branch has to detain and try suspected terrorists since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
With Graham in the lead, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act in September 2006 after an earlier Supreme Court ruling that the Bush administration couldn't set up a new system for prosecuting alleged terrorists without congressional approval.
The fresh Supreme Court decision is a major blow for Graham politically, eviscerating a law that he recently cited as one of the three achievements of his first Senate term that he was most proud of.
"To the extent that Lindsey Graham wanted to get the federal courts out of the process (of prosecuting detainees) altogether, this ruling is an absolute loss for him, and it's one that Congress can't go back around," said Thomas Crocker, a University of South Carolina law professor.
Graham said he'd explore the possibility of drafting a constitutional amendment "to blunt the effect of this decision."
Any constitutional amendment would be unlikely to move in Congress during the waning months of a lame-duck presidency, however, and at the height of a campaign for the White House.
Graham's talk of a constitutional amendment indicated how little room the Supreme Court has left him, Sen. John McCain — the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — and Bush in their long-standing effort to create a separate trial system outside the federal courts for alleged terrorists.
Graham said that the law gave terrorism suspects at Guantanamo adequate protections, including the power to ask tribunals to review their detainments and to challenge convictions before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
With the Supreme Court now giving detainees full access to the federal courts, Graham warned that "some of the most liberal district courts in the country will have an opportunity to determine who is a threat to the United States."
"Federal judges will now be in charge of the day-to-day military prisons and the interrogation of prisoners," Graham said. "This will empower activist lawyers and interest groups to intervene in basic military matters for the first time in history."
Crocker of USC, though, said Graham was exaggerating the effects of the ruling.
"The court does not claim it has the power to make military decisions, but it does claim the power granted it under the Constitution to hear certain claims properly brought under the writ of habeas corpus," Crocker said.....
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