restore habeas corpus

The Supreme Court ruling regarding Guantanamo:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/06/13/gitmo_bush/

When I can stand to think about it, it just makes me sick that the men at Guantanamo have been there for over five years without trial. One of the organizations representing detainees in the current Supreme Court case is the Center for Constitutional Rights. Check out their Web site: http://ccrjustice.org/beyond-guantanamo

For some reason, this Thing hasn’t gotten much attention, despite its urgent importance. Do people not know what is going on? The United States is disappearing people for years at a time. They are vanishing into Guantanamo and into secret prisons around the world. We, the citizens of the United States, are tolerating this.

“In common law, habeas corpus (/’heɪbiəs ‘kɔɹpəs/) (Latin: [We command that] you have the body) is the name of a legal action or writ by means of which detainees can seek relief from unlawful imprisonment. The writ of habeas corpus has historically been an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus

an excerpt from this Salon article:

“The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is, without question, the single worst law enacted during the Bush presidency, and is one of the most destructive laws passed in the last several decades. It is not merely a bad law. It vests in the President the power to detain people indefinitely with no meaningful opportunity to contest the government’s accusations. That is the very power the Founders sought first and foremost to prohibit.

More significantly, whether a country permits its political leaders to imprison people arbitrarily and with no process is one of the few defining attributes dividing free and civilized countries from lawless tyrannies. Or, as Thomas Jefferson put it in his 1789 letter to Thomas Paine: “I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” To vest the President with the power to imprison people indefinitely with no charges is fundamentally to transform the type of country we are.”

Read the rest of the article here: Democrats Bear Responsibility for Restoring Habeas Corpus

something to think about this May Day

For more information, go to the Center for Constitutional Rights