"the worst thing to happen legislatively in my history as a civil rights

litigator"

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060109/brecher


Fixing the Torture Fix

Congress passed just before Christmas legislation allowing evidence obtained by torture to be used against Guantánamo captives and denying them the right to habeas corpus--the right to make the government justify their captivity before a court. Christopher Anders of the American Civil Liberties Union calls these provisions "horrific precedents" that are "counterproductive and against the rule of law." Michael Ratner, head of the Center for Constitutional Rights, calls it "a legal, political and moral outrage" and "the worst thing to happen legislatively in my history as a civil rights litigator."

This assault on the most venerable and universal of legal principles is attached to the same legislation as Senator John McCain's anti-torture measure. But it provides a legal incentive to torture and blocks the main vehicle that federal courts and human rights advocates have used to uncover and challenge prisoner abuse at Guantánamo.

This language fulfills one clear purpose: to prevent courts from hearing evidence of torture, abuse and unlawful activity. What it protects is not the security of Americans against terrorism but the security of high government officials against prosecution for violation of the Anti-Torture and War Crimes Acts.

-snip-

Human rights attorneys will take the Graham amendment on in the courts. CCR's Ratner says, "We are going to litigate the hell out of this. We have hundreds of high-powered attorneys who work with Guantánamo cases who are really angry." In the last few days lawyers have filed habeas corpus petitions covering virtually all of the detainees whose identities they have been able to discover; 105 petitions now cover several hundred detainees. Their lawyers will argue that under the Supreme Court's Rasul v. Bush decision, "we can still bring habeas corpus petitions." The result is likely to be "years of litigation."
-snip-
-------------------------------------


some day Gitmo will be liberated and razed to the ground.

Bush's choice for the high court from getting the seat on the bench. If he gets the highest position as bush wants then we are looking at every right being stripped away from us.

reconvene on this monday, the 26th.

i will check again, because they have worded it all VERY AMBIGUOUSLY!!!

please do check too, will you? let me know if you find otherwise?

thank you!


peace!

We, the people, are not being represented in Washington DC. Issue polls over the last 2 years show overwhelmingly that the great majority of Americans disagree with every Bush policy, foreign and domestic--the war, torture, the deficit, women's rights, you name it. Yet Bush policy keeps being enacted--in this case, and in the case of the war, outright illegal and unconstitutional policy. And when you look at the election system that put this Congress and this President in power--electronic voting run on "trade secret," proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls--you know the reason why. Only a non-transparent, fraudulent election system could produce such egregiously bad representation of the interests and views of the vast majority.

It is righteous, indeed, to file lawsuits against them--and an extremely worthy endeavor--but what do you do when an illegitimate President appoints the judges, and an illegitimate Congress confirms those appointments?

The courts should long ago have shut Guantanamo Bay down. In the absence of court action, Congress should have done it. Yet it, and far worse things--'disappeared' prisoners, nameless prisoners sent on black flights to torture dungeons in eastern Europe, rendition to foreign countries, illegal arrests in foreign countries, hundreds of deaths in custody--oppression such as we have not seen since Stalin's Russia and Pinochet's Chile--are on-going, and setting precedents for unlimited power of the state against any individual or class of people, whose rights may be erased by the state at will.

The only way to reverse these fascist policies, short of war, is by the will of the people in transparent elections--such as has been occurring throughout South America over the last several years, and, mostly recently, in Bolivia. It will be a long road back to democracy, but we must take the first step, while we still have some power to do so. That is our situation right now. We still have power at the state/local level to restore our right to vote, and there are ferocious struggles, by courageous and knowledgeable people, going on at that level now.

There is also a bill in Congress (Russ Holt-HR 550), with 169 co-sponsors, that will stop the corporate privatization of our elections, and reverse it, by, among other things, banning undisclosed software, but the rest of Congress seems too busy to bother with it. It's more important to them, apparently, to give George Bush ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS MORE of our money for the despicable crimes of unjust war and torture. Can anyone maintain that this Congress and its Executive Dictator represent the interests of the people?

Will we be able to recognize the mechanism of oppression--control over election results--and take effective action to reverse it, before it is too late? That is the question.

is too late."

alas.

now what?

into the harbor?

now


peace!

I just realized that they control the military and the freepers have most of the guns.:sarcasm:

were correct, donsu.

it had passed, last thursday night.

i'd so hoped....

your last paragraph, there,

>Human rights attorneys will take the Graham amendment on in the courts. CCR's Ratner says, "We are going to litigate the hell out of this. We have hundreds of high-powered attorneys who work with Guantánamo cases who are really angry." In the last few days lawyers have filed habeas corpus petitions covering virtually all of the detainees whose identities they have been able to discover; 105 petitions now cover several hundred detainees. Their lawyers will argue that under the Supreme Court's Rasul v. Bush decision, "we can still bring habeas corpus petitions." The result is likely to be "years of litigation."
-snip-
>

helps some.

thank you.


peace and solidarity

And give us what is ours: Our Right to be free from a government intent upon obliterating Our Rights.

Many a soldier has shed warm blood for Our Rights, they are not to be taken lightly.

First, we must get back our power of the Vote, for it HAS been stolen.