did i miss the talk about this in oct/nov 2006?
was it in the news? i been wondering if its for real, if i missed the discussion and dilution correct me quick, i'm freaken out about this.
GOODBYE AMERICA, HELLO NAZI GERMANY? (Are you an enemy combatant?) The Military Commissions Act and the Warner Defense Act, signed into law October, 2006 give G.W. Bush and his successors full police state powers, doing away the Constitution, trashing habeas corpus and retroactively absolving torturers of their crimes. Anyone can be declared an “unlawful enemy combatant” and dispatched by a military commission. The definition of ‘enemy combatant’ is “extremely broad and arbitrary.” This video leaflet uses text from the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Bill of Rights Defense Ctte, the ACLU, and Amnesty International. Youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v32O_TwsXEY
**notes on below**
SEN. RUSS FEINGOLD (D-WIS) (Senate floor) "The Military Commissions permits an individual to be convicted on the basis of coerced testimony and hearsay…does not allow full judicial review of the conviction…; allows someone convicted under these rules to be put to death.; denies detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere people who have been held for years but have not been tried or even charged with any crime-the ability to challenge their detention in court.; seeks to suspend the Great Writ of habeas corpus. eliminates the right of habeas corpus for those detained as enemy combatants.; disallows the accused to argue that they are not, in fact, enemy combatants,; permits individuals to be convicted, and even sentenced to death, on the basis of coerced testimony."
CONGRESSMAN RON PAUL (R - TX) “the law officially allows for citizen concentration camp facilities..." "Right now we don't have concentration camps, but . . . the authority has been given so that concentration camps can come without Habeas Corpus."
SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT) "The bill before us does not merely suspend the Great Writ, the Writ of Habeas Corpus. It just eliminates it permanently.”
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY) "The bill before us allows the admission into evidence of statements derived through cruel, inhuman and degrading interrogation. This bill undermines the Geneva Conventions.. Have we fallen so low as to debate how much torture we are willing to stomach? This law would give license to this Administration to pick people up off the streets of the United States and hold them indefinitely without charges and without legal recourse."
SEN. ARLEN SPECTPR (R-PA) said it “set us back 900 years,” then voted for it.
DEMS IN FAVOR OF PASSAGE Senate (12)
Carper (Del.), Johnson (S.D.), Landrieu (La.), Lautenberg (N.J.), Lieberman (Conn.), Menendez (N.J), Pryor (Ark.), Rockefeller (W. Va.), Salazar (Co.), Stabenow (Mich.), Nelson (Fla.), Nelson (Neb.)
GOP AGAINST Chaffee Rhode Island
Jeffords (Independent) against
links/sources
http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolit...ked_powers.asp
MCA:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0061017-1.html
Feingold
http://www.counterpunch.org/feingold09282006.html
Leahy:
www.leahy.senate.gov/press/200609/092806c.html
Olbermann:
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15220450
Greenwald:
http://www.inblogs.net/glenngreenwal...460324274.html
Jennifer Van Bergen:
http://www.counterpunch.org/vanbergen10142006.html