America, RIP (1776-2006)

Today is a terrible day for the United States and for anyone who loves the constitution. The senate just voted down Arlen Specter's amendment that would have preserved the writ of habeas corpus, one of our most cherished rights. Our founding fathers fought and died to give us the right to be free from arbitrary detention by government.

The senate just cast that right away with only a few hours of perfunctory debate and I expect that later today they will pass the entire abomination of a bill, legalizing torture, indefinite detentions and retroactively immunizing anyone who has tortured in the past.

It's a very dark day for America.

Via Froomkin, take note of this from Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman:

"Buried in the complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights. (my emphasis added)

"This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops 'during an armed conflict,' it also allows him to seize anybody who has 'purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.' This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison."

I'll go Professor Ackerman one further- we've had the VP say publicly that anyone who publicly criticizes the president's war policies is aiding the terrorists. What's to stop the administration from detaining John Murtha? or John Kerry? or Howard Dean? or you or me or Cindy Sheehan? Everyone should remember that this is the gang who thinks the Vietnam war was lost due to a bunch of rabble rousing hippies. For the first time in my life, I'm actually worried about what I say publicly.

Anyone who thinks the can be trusted with this power is fooling themselves.

The NY TImes editorial Rushing off a cliff, comments:

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

snip

But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

I'm going to disagree on one point- I'm not sure America is going to survive long enough to fix this catastrophe.

Froomkin asks:

"How far from our historic and Constitutional values are we willing to stray? How mercilessly are we willing to treat those we suspect to be our enemies? How much raw, unchecked power are we willing to hand over to the executive?"

I think the answer is clear. Everyone in America should be ashamed today.