WP,pg1: Detainee Measure to Have Fewer Restrictions: New WH/Cong. accord

[DeepModem Mom]

Detainee Measure to Have Fewer Restrictions
White House Reaches Accord With Lawmakers
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 26, 2006; Page A01

Republican lawmakers and the White House agreed over the weekend to alter new legislation on military commissions to allow the United States to detain and try a wider range of foreign nationals than an earlier version of the bill permitted, according to government sources.

Lawmakers and administration officials announced last week that they had reached accord on the plan for the detention and military trials of suspected terrorists, and it is scheduled for a vote this week. But in recent days the Bush administration and its House allies successfully pressed for a less restrictive description of how the government could designate civilians as "unlawful enemy combatants," the sources said yesterday. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of negotiations over the bill.

The government has maintained since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that, based on its reading of the laws of war, anyone it labels an unlawful enemy combatant can be held indefinitely at military or CIA prisons. But Congress has not yet expressed its view on who is an unlawful combatant, and the Supreme Court has not ruled directly on the matter.

As a result, human rights experts expressed concern yesterday that the language in the new provision would be a precedent-setting congressional endorsement for the indefinite detention of anyone who, as the bill states, "has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" or its military allies.

The definition applies to foreigners living inside or outside the United States and does not rule out the possibility of designating a U.S. citizen as an unlawful combatant. It is broader than that in last week's version of the bill, which resulted from lengthy, closed-door negotiations between senior administration officials and dissident Republican senators. That version incorporated a definition backed by the Senate dissidents: those "engaged in hostilities against the United States."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/25/AR2006092501514.html

[jimshoes]

1. When do they officially

burn the Constitution and Bill of Rights? This is a dangerous game the white house is playing here, no?

[DeepModem Mom]

2. They're certainly running roughshod over them -- scarier by the day. nt

[Amonester]

3. One more step to Martial Law by the authoritarian Repub regime?

And who will oppose the totally corrupt reptiles after the Republican rubber-stamps pass this horrible shame?

Bye-bye Democracy. :cry: :grr: :mad: :grr: :mad: :grr:

[villager]

4. and this is just fine with the GOP "rebels," I assume?

n/t

[wholetruth00]

5. More important than ever to get these people out of power and take our

nation back from the abyss.

[mhatrw]

6. Is *anybody* going to stand up for the Bill of Rights? n/t