| The Death of Liberty |
 The Death of Liberty | Oct. 17th, 2006 @ 07:06 pm  |
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~{crickets}~
That is the sound of the death of Liberty in this country, and the collective lack of concern about it from those who may very well suffer because of it.
Today our Dictator In Chief signed into law the 'Military Commissions Act of 2006' which among other things allows, at the discretion of the President or the Secretary of Defense, for those deemed an "unlawful enemy combatant" to be detained on mere suspicion, held indefinitely without charge, to be tortured, and prosecuted by a military tribunal that can use hearsay evidence or confessions gained through coercion, evidence of which the defense for the accused may have limited or no access to whatsoever to refute such claims. The penalty for being found guilty — execution by firing squad.
Today marks the end of the writ of Habeas Corpus.
Oh, and that's not just my opinion, this is from the likes of the ACLU, Amnesty International, and Jonathan Turley, Professor of Constitutional Law at George Washington University: "People have no idea how significant this is. Really a time of shame this is for the American system. The strange thing is that we have become sort of constitutional couch potatoes. The Congress just gave the President despotic powers and you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to Dancing With the Stars. It's otherworldly..People clearly don't realize what a fundamental change it is about who we are as a country. What happened today changed us. And I'm not too sure we're gonna change back anytime soon."
Keith Olbermann asks Professor Turley of this Act, "Does this mean that under this law, ultimately the only thing keeping you, I, or the viewer out of Gitmo is the sanity & honesty of the President of the United States?" The Professor replies "It does."
This is indeed such a dark day in this country. One that will be looked upon for generations. And hopefully there will be those who can and will generations from now ask why such a thing happened, and why the hell we let it happen; why we didn't do more to take a stand against it.
No one yet knows the ramifications of this law. We don't know how far reaching it will be, nor who of us will be prosecuted by it, or some extension of it should it be declared not to apply to citizens. Undoubtedly, for masses of U.S. citizens to be detained by this law would not come on a whim. Well, per se. It would likely come after some sort of terrorist event, or plot. After such an event the level of hysteria would be such that the President could decide that those who have been critics of his or his policies has in some way aided these 'enemies of the state' and therefore are guilty of treason. Any one of us could find ourselves disappearing in the middle of the night and perhaps never being seen in the eyes of the public again, to be tortured and detained for years, ultimately executed for our 'crimes' against the State. Since it is veritably inevitable that such an event will take place, just by the government's own statistics of fear, it seems only a matter of time before American citizens find themselves being held without the protections our Constitution has provided us for over 200 years.
I must admit that I have come to expect this sort of thing from our evil Dictator In Chief, it fits the same agenda he's had since he came to office, but what disappoints me is how our Congress passed this unAmerican legislation, and worse yet how little Americans seem bothered by it.
I knew when Bush took office, and then the Republicans won the Congress, and we had power in the Supreme Court shift to the Republicans that so many of the values of this country would be swept aside. I knew with absolute power the Republicans would abuse it in ways that America could be truly ashamed of, and they didn't prove me wrong. I wish they would have. This just confirms why in spite of the fact that I so strongly disapprove of the Democrats, they will be gaining my vote often in the upcoming elections, just so that I can vote against the Republicans. For this, among so many other reasons, I am unlikely to vote Republican ever again.
Some food for thought:
Why the Military Commissions Act Is "Flagrantly Unconstitutional"
Portion of Countdown with Keith Olbermann
>>added from October 18th program
Special Comment from Keith Olbermann
Feeling like:  disappointed |
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