Should we start using the German word for Leader now- Der Fuhrer?
"The Framers of our Constitution understood the need for checks and balances, but this bill discards them."
Actually, it doesn't. Congress can repeal this tomorrow, next year, the year after, or whenever it wants. But I don't think that's necessary, because I think this bill is good. I think Senator Reid's statement is more of an exercise in politics than reality.
gee Thomas, the first post on this thread and you pull a Goodwin?
I'm really tired of arguing about this, but I'll say that I would have supported each of the proposed amendments listed in the post.
That said, I think Mark is just wrong to say that the bill gives the President the power to detain indefinitely a US citizen. It doesn't. In fact, by my reading (someone show me the provision(s) if I'm wrong), the bill doesn't give the President the power to detain ANYONE. All it does is outline the rights given to a certain class of persons who are detained (presumably under other authority given to the Administration or the military). That class of persons is defined as: "alien unlawful enemy combatants."
Frankly, I've seen this so many times that I'm convinced the bill MUST somewhere authorize detention of US citizens. But other than for reference to the "definitions" section of the bill - which doesn't authorize anyone to DO anything - I've seen no reference to any provision authorizing any such thing.
Mark, what am I missing that you're seeing here?
Why b*tch and complain? We are 5 weeks away from an election. If you don't like it, vote the bums out. Simple.
Sydney, I don't deny that Congress can repeal this law. I pray God it will. But while it is in effect, it does discard the values Mark was talking about. That we can walk out to the dumpster and retrieve them doesn't change that.
*shrugs* I guess I'm supposed to feel better because the government can only detain my wife as an alien unlawful enemy combatant without judicial review and subject her to "aggressive interrogation," but not me.
SYdney- I don't know what a Goodwin is, but there's nothing like a nice provocative first post on a Friday. 
DREAM, THY WILL BE DONE
Who was it who passed by?
No one, it was I,
Unknowing of myself I sleep
Dream what waking cannot keep -
The hidden does not lie
And it is I
Tell, what is the citizen?
Gentle women, gentle men
Who then may never recognize
Themselves in someone else’s eyes,
But only be what seems,
Know themselves in dreams
But even there what may invade,
Change how we are made?
It is the passion of the state
That outer and the inner mate
To be as one -
Dream, thy will be done
Pavel
September 29, 2006
Joe,
Your reading of the bill is almost certainly correct. In fact, given the surprising lack of deference given to the executive by the Supreme Court in Hamdan, the only way I can see the bill being construed to give the President such broad authority is as a prelude to the Courts striking it down. We shall see.
I did learn some interesting things about the history of military tribunals, though. It seems that in 1815 Andrew Jackson declared martial law in New Orleans prior to the battle of New Orleans, and kept it in effect even after the battle was over.
When a man named Louis Louallier published an article in the local paper criticizing Jackson for the continued martial law, Jackson had him arrested. Louallier's lawyer sought a writ of habeas corpus, which was granted. Instead of releasing Louallier, Jackson had the Judge who issued the writ arrested as well. Louallier was acquitted by court martial, but Jackson kept him imprisoned anyway. Jackson was eventually fined $1000 for his actions, an amount that was later remitted to him via congressional legislation.
http://digital.library.unt.edu/
g...8_2004Jul09.pdf
Ain't history fun?
Robed Masters
Mark,
I think that you missed the main point of the article: In Hamden the Supreme Court over-reached and this was smack-down of the Court.
More tasty fruit from Roe v. Wade.
_
Where does it say this "the President can declare you an enemy combatant, can indefinitely detain you, and can even subject you to torture even if you are a citizen" in the bill? I don't see it.
Pavel,
To dream in hues of paradise:
How they draw my darkened will,
Forgo the heartaches, pain, and price,
And bare some greater still.
thomas,
Please see Goodwin's law, and in particular its corollary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God...ki/Godwin'
s_law
Whoever mentions Hitler or the Nazis automatically loses the debate. You did it in the first post.
John,
Where's that from?
"To dream in hues of paradise:
How they draw my darkened will,
Forgo the heartaches, pain, and price,
And bare some greater still."
"Whoever mentions Hitler or the Nazis automatically loses the debate. You did it in the first post."
My uncle's half-sister was a member of the Hitler youth organization for young women. I met her. She was very strange and not at all pleasant to meet.
His brother-in-law was a captain in the Wehrmacht.
The SD was after Uncle Fritz (God bless his soul) when he left Germany in a hurry. He didn't return until the fifties.
Half my family were murdered at Treblinka.
I just read about Mengele cutting open the stomach of a living pregnant woman and then walking away as if he had just scratched his ear.
The father of my spiritual advisor was the Polish Ambassador to Yugoslavia in 1941. He and his mother and brother fled to the States via East Africa.
And so on. Some of us are not dead yet, and the Nazis are a still a live subject for us.
Pavel--all the more reason not to invoke the Nazis frivolously.
" Pavel--all the more reason not to invoke the Nazis frivolously."
You bet.
Exactly. Invoking the Nazis all the time is like calling wolf all the time. Bush has been called Hitler so many times now by the left that it doesn't even matter anymore.
Or, for that matter, today's putatively analogous monster, the Khmer Rouge, which slaughtered millions.
Rather than tired conversations about Hitler analogies, could anyone explain to me why the 5 year sunset amendment was a bad idea?
Me! Me! I know! I know! Pick me, Katherine!
Because the War on Terror will never end!
Katherine--I don't know that it was a bad idea. On the other hand, the absence of a sunset provision does not prevent Congress from amending or striking the legislation in the event it determines the MCA was a bad idea. Of course, Congress would actually have to have a debate and vote on the record to do that (rather than have a sunset provision obviate such a public debate). Perhaps requiring Congress to debate and take positions on these issues for all to see is justification enough for the refusal to include a sunset provision.
Well, now it can continue forever without a debate or vote. I don't think that's preferable. I think Congress should have justify holding people without charge or trial or access to court, not the other way around.
And, Congress can't repeal this now without a 2/3 majority to override a veto. Maybe another president would sign the repeal--Feingold would, and any Democratic president would face pressure from his base to do so--but executives and governments don't tend to voluntarily give up power.
Sydney- it wasn't a debate. It was a joke, referring to Mark's calling Bush the Leader. Or maybe it was just sort of a joke.
The only reason I've seen so far for the denouncement of this bill is because people like Mark continue to mindlessly repeat that it authorizes torture when in fact it expressly prohibits it. Do you really think you're fooling people? Maybe, but you're not going to fool me. Every time you mention this law, I'm going to flat out state that it prohibits torture because that is, in fact, what it does.
Geez, this is why the torture debate is hard to listen to. It makes idiots out of all of us, on both sides. Sin making people stupid in action.
Homeland Security's logo is two swatstika's laid over the top of each other (so they appear to spin) with a star in the middle. I suppose they found that funny. I think this lets Thomas bring up the subject any time he likes.
http://
www.weatherbuggovernment....ws_homeland.jpg
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