The Republican War on America: Habeas Corpus
Posted in Stand Up For Liberty by R Lee Wrights on October 14th, 2006 by George Phillies
“Return to the last week of September, 2006, and the Republican Bills to legalize torture, to end the right of habeas corpus, to imprison persons without trial, and to perform wiretapping without warrants. These Bills were Un-American to the core, and go to reveal the truth:
Above all, the Bush War on Terror is a war on your freedoms.”
The Republican Party attacked The Great Writ, habeas corpus. Habeas corpus is not a new legal idea. Habeas Corpus as a fundamental legal right can be traced back to the 14th century and the Magna Carta. Long before Christopher Columbus reached the New World, long before Englishmen reached North America, habeas corpus had appeared as a right.
The opposite of habeas corpus is the Star Chamber, an English trial process made infamous by the Stuart kings in the 17th century. The Star Chamber’s proceedings were authoritarian, arbitrary, and secret. There was no right of appeal.
The Republicans started with Jose Padilla, claiming he was plotting to release radiological weapons on America. He was seized, detained without trial in a military prison in violation of Federal Law, and held for years without access to attorneys.
As time has gone on, prior charges disappeared, and new and unrelated charges appeared. In front of a judge, the government’s claims seemed to evaporate. Padilla had been held for years without trial, because if he had been brought to trial it would have become apparent that the Federal charges against Padilla were without substance.
Now the Star Chamber has been brought to the New World by the Republican
War on America. Under the cognomen Military Tribunals, George Bush Republicans and their Democratic sycophants have brought to America trials without juries, not by judges approved by the Senate but by military officers whose proceedings are at the beck and call of their commander in chief.
Furthermore, under the Republican Star Chamber bill, the Constitutionality of the elimination of habeas corpus has been removed from the jurisdiction of the courts.
The abolition of habeas corpus is Un-American, and is one more part of The Republican War on America. Once again the great majority of Republican party Federal officeholders and their cowardly Democratic sycophants, not to mention the two-faced Senator of the Party of Lieberman, voted to legalize indefinite imprisonment without trial, in direct contradiction to the Bill of Rights.
George Phillies is a contributing editor for Liberty For All. You can contact Dr. Phillies at phillies@wpi.edu.
George Phillies said,
October 14, 2006 @ 10:22 am
We now learn from the filings of Padilla’s Attorney:
http://www.discourse.net/archives/docs/Padilla_Outrageous_Government_Conduct.pdf
which have been retyped into html in Inland at Daily Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/11/2338/1538
the assertion that, for the entirety of his three year detention by the Republican Party and its military agents, Padilla was systematically tortured in a wide variety of ways.