"What habeous corpus means to you" -- in lay terms. Great essay.

[pnwmom]

I recommend reading the whole thing -- and sending it to all your friends and relatives.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-beinhart/what-habeas-corpus-means-_b_40014.html

What is Habeas Corpus? Is it some obscure Latin legalism? One of the tricky clauses the ACLU uses to get evildoers out of jail? Does it mean the prosecution has to show a body in a murder case? Or is it the basis of your protection from tyranny?

It is the right to be brought into court.

It is fundamental to - and a sort of shorthand for - the right to be in a legal system, with laws and judges, evidence and a defense.

SNIP

Under Habeas Corpus, you have the right to say, I want to be brought into the court to determine if I am the right person charged, if there's an actual law prohibiting what I'm charged with, if the people who are holding me have the jurisdiction to do so, and I want that publicly known and I want the right to dispute all of that and the right to be tried too.

Without Habeas Corpus you can be swept up off the street and never heard from again. Period. Nobody has to know. Nobody - including yourself - has to know why. Nobody gets to determine if there is a law against what you're charged with. You have no rights at all.

SNIP

[hobbit709]

1. The one thing all dictatorships

have in common. And this is what Gonzo and his fellow cohorts want to do to us.

[pnwmom]

2. They've already done it, actually. And to U.S. citizens.

[enough]

3. This is a great essay in plain-speaking language.

Needs wide circulation. Thanks for posting.

[pnwmom]

8. You're welcome.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

4. K & R. Wish I could put this on every...

...kitchen table in the country for reading with the morning paper -- most people still don't fully understand everything they've been stripped of by BushCo.

[enough]

5. One more R will get this to the front page of DU, if not of the newspapers.

[meldroc]

6. Done!

Oh, and it's spelled "habeas corpus"...

[pnwmom]

11. Thanks for the R --

and for the spelling tip!

[pnwmom]

9. Thank you, enough. That was my goal, too.

[bonito]

7. For 54 years Ive been breathing

That right isn't in the constitution ether, we've had habeas Corpus for what 800 years, it a given, implied, common sense thats been around allot longer that any of us.

[Morgana LaFey]

10. Which is PRECISELY why the Constitution is written in the

negative: the right of ____ can't be abridged or suspended. It's written in a way that acknowledges in an implied way that the rights automatically exist, just as you say. They exist because we are human, tho there are obviously many places on earth where those natural rights aren't recognized.

Now these Federalist Society jerks want to say, gee, if the right isn't explicitly stated in the Constitution, it doesn't exist after all.

[enough]

12. One more snip>

snip>

Habeas Corpus means you are in a society of laws. Without it, you are in the land of Saddam Hussein, August Pinochet, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Ivan the Terrible ... and ...