The point of a fair trial

[austin78704]

A fair trial is not some gift our benevolent government gives to the citizens because it's just oh-so fucking nice. A fair trial is one of the barriers that stands in between us little people and abusive politicians.

Some around here are pushing the idea that there's a special class of criminals that's just so awful and so dangerous that they don't _deserve_ a trial. Funny, I used to hear that crap only from republicans. OK, let me ask you this: how do we know that someone accused of being in that class has been accused justly? If you give someone the power to damn people without recourse, how do you know he won't go damning personal enemies and scapegoats?

Well, you don't; that's where the universal fair trial comes into play. Nobody gets to pass judgment without review--not even the POTUS. Throughout the Constitution and Bill of Rights--remember those old things?--one of the pervasive themes is a distrust of an over-concentration of power. It's a really good system--and we're going to throw it out because guys like Awlaki are assholes?

It's absolutely disgusting what Obama has done WRT Awlaki, regardless of how terrible the guy really is. And you can't blame the congressional republicans for this one.

Don't even try to feed me that line of bullshit about how dangerous the guy might hypothetically be. Our worst terrorist attack ever wasted fewer lives than the current wars that the administration can't bring itself to stop. Dead bodies are apparently not a concern of theirs.

I agree with the other posters: Much of the outrage around here over Bush's actions weren't about the actions, but about the political affiliation of Bush.

[H2O Man]

1. Your last line

is weak.

[NNN0LHI]

2. Without an open and fair trial we will never know if the right people were prosecuted

Couple hundred years ago out east a lot of people were tortured into confessing they were witches. They even implicated some of their friends and family members as witches too.

How many of those people do you think were actually witches?

Don

[Scuba]

6. Just Christine.

[rug]

3. "The United States of America will never be intimidated by thugs and assassins.

The killers will fail, and the Iraqi people will live in freedom." - George W. Bush

[notesdev]

4. I share your frustration

During my time here on DU I have been astonished how little basic rights are supported when the subject is someone other than a party interest group... as if the party will never be out of power and the shoe will never be on the other foot.

More and more often I have been thinking we need a tea party-style anti-establishment grassroots movement of our own, because what the party leadership has been handing down in policy after policy is opposed to traditional Democratic Party principles more often than not.

We already have a "fascism" choice on the ballot, we really don't need two such choices.

[Canuckistanian]

5. K&R

One point of my own. It was Bush's ACTIONS that made him so repugnant. Not merely that he was from another party.

[Puregonzo1188]

7. Thank you! The targeted assassinates business is absolutely immoral and illegal. I can't

believe that people here on DU are defending it. This guy isn't in an armed conflict zone, he's not on a battlefield, and he's not firing a gun at our troops or law enforcement agents, so all of those arguments don't apply here.

[annabanana]

8. "I used to hear that crap only from republicans"

funny . . . . I used to hear it only about them godless commies in the USSR and RED CHINA..

It used to be taught in American schools as a way to tell the good guys from the bad guys in the world.

Some of us think it still is.......