The New American Dream: Torture, Gulags, Arbitrary Imprisionment

[mhatrw]

kangaroo courts and no right to a fair and speedy trial.

Our 230 year old experiment in a democracy that respects the inalienable rights of its subjects is now coming to an end with nary a whimper.

This isn't about whether we are or are not too squeamish to waterboard terrorists, folks. Everybody hates terrorists. Nobody wants to coddle them. Sure, many of us don't think torture should ever be legal, for many reasons including the potential for even worse abuses than those that we've already seen at Abu Ghraib and the fact that the information gleaned from this sort of questioning is almost never reliable. But the torture aspects of this bill are no more than the sensationalistic cover story for a wide ranging assault on the fundamental rights of US citizens (as well as all other human beings in the world).

This is about the same people who told us the best way to fight terrorism was to start a war that had nothing to do with it now telling us that we all have to give up our basic right to a fair and speedy trial at the whim of our monarchical executive. This bill reverses over 790 years of Anglo Saxon legal tradition starting with the Magna Carta and extending through our revered Constitution and Bill of Rights.

If any terrorists actually hate us for our freedoms, then we are about to make a lot of new terrorist friends.

Who in our entire nation has the courage to stand up for our Bill of Rights? The cynical, desperate Republicans are trying to use the "soft on terror" label as a bludgeon to beat the cowering, spineless Democrats while our 220-year-old Bill of Rights is raped and pillaged in the process!

Yes, the Supreme Court might save the day by striking down the most perversely unconstitutional excesses of this law, but what does it say about the political landscape of our country that both the legislative and executive branches are conspiring to undo the 6th and 7th amendments as their election strategy?

Every single individual defending this disgusting assault on the nearly 800-year-old principles of common law makes me physically ill. Are we really that afraid of a few crazies with box cutters that we can't just man up for ourselves against them like the passengers of Flight 93 did when and if the time comes? Are we really that gutless that we have to cede infinite power to our monarch in our mewling belief that only thus can we be delivered from the scary Muslim bogeyman? What can the "scary terrorists" possibly do to us that's worse than what we are about to do to ourselves?

[mhatrw]

1. kick