Habeas

From Daily Kos some good news.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act (S. 185) this morning, with no amendments and no debate, 11-8. Specter was the sole Republican supporting the legislation. The bill should head to the full floor this month.

Restoration of full Habeas Corpus should be considered one of the more important things this nation should do. While it is not an issue that, in normal times, many of us would notice on a typical day, it is fundamental to out freedoms and to the successful operation of our government. A government unrestricted by a requirement to respect Habeas Corpus is one that will eventually go the way of tyranny, and ultimately utter failure.

One of the most frustrating things to me has been the extent, even in these modern times, to which people accept that abandoning rights such as this will improve our security. This is not true, and the overwhelming experience of mankind shows that there is little reason to believe that it might be true. Officials granted the power to arbitrarily seize and imprison people will not use that power to better protect the citizenry, rather the powers inevitably are used to protect officials from their growing failure to protect the citizenry. The current policies do nothing to protect the security of the American citizen, it serves only to protect our current elected officials.

The long term health and safety of the United States of America requires that we repeal the current policy suspending Habeas Corpus. The current bill is a good step in that direction. It still faces challenge in the Senate, and, of course, from the current President. Note that Arlen Specter was the only Republican on the committee to vote yes on the bill. Nonetheless, any move to start pointing America back in the direction of her traditional values of freedom and liberty will pay back benefits in the long term.

Habeas Corpus

Link to Daily Kos: Clearing Up The Confusion Over Habeas Corpus

The above link is to a useful diary on Daily Kos on Habeas Corpus, the Supreme Court and AG Gonzales.

Habeas Corpus

The United States Senate is currently considering repealing the right to habeas corpus for detainees at Gitmo. It is hard to conceive of a more shameful, more disgusting spectacle. Habeas Corpus is among the most essential rights that a free people must respect to remain free. The right requires that the state can be compelled to give reason why a person is being detained. The importance of this right can hardly be better described than by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Paper number 84

The creation of crimes after the commission of the fact, or, in other words, the subjecting of men to punishment for things which, when they were done, were breaches of no law, and the practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny. The observations of the judicious Blackstone,[1] in reference to the latter, are well worthy of recital: "To bereave a man of life, [says he] or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government." And as a remedy for this fatal evil he is everywhere peculiarly emphatical in his encomiums on the habeas corpus act, which in one place he calls "the BULWARK of the British Constitution."[2]

To repeal this right is to adopt tyranny and, what I think is as important, is to embrace cowardice. For the only reason for taking this step is to quell our fears for what might happen. Once a population abandons courage, there is little hope for its liberty.