Habeas Corpus and Judicial Torture - the Sequel
So there was an incomplete semi-defeat compromise for Lindsay Graham's bill regarding habeas corpus for detainees. But as I have mentioned before, and others have had this occur to them to, this is not the end of it, nor is anyone who is not "a terrorist" or "a foreign fighter" [sic] safe for it.
I have alluded to this a couple times, but I didn't have the full data on it - the references to "streamlining" Habeas Corpus are a bit of Newspeak, here expounded by dKossack Eddie C, about a plan to expand the denial of rights to all prisoners of the state. Who doesn't want to streamline procedures? It sounds like they want to make sure that people get speedy and uncomplicated justice.
But that's what Habeas Corpus already guarantees. This is like Clear Skies, or Operation Iraqi Freedom - another act of Minitrue to camoflage their Orwellian goals of making it more difficult for people to challenge their accusers.
In a country which has authorized the use of torture to extract confessions.
There are a few people who naively say things like "but since revoking habeas corpus altogether is unconstitutional, won't any such law be struck down even if they do pass such a bill?"
In the ideal world, perhaps. But who will do the striking? Torture you may recall is repeatedly prohibited here. There is no such abstraction, things do not just happen, people - real, specific, individual people have to make them happen, and if they don't, if they are too frightened or apathetic, then no, no one will enforce the law, punish the perverters of justice and make them stop.
How long will it take? How long did the Terror last? Or the Spanish Inquisition? The Czarist oppression, or American apartheid and unequal justice? How much much horror will a people stand, before it occurs to them that it isn't just going to happen to poor people, brown people, foreigners, the unworthy, and it's time for them to take a stand? That yes, the consequences of turning a blind eye are turning out to be worse than otherwise?
History says, a whole lot. And that the backlash, the longer reform is delayed, is the worse.
*(Yes, I know it hasn't really ended. That's part of the point.)
I have alluded to this a couple times, but I didn't have the full data on it - the references to "streamlining" Habeas Corpus are a bit of Newspeak, here expounded by dKossack Eddie C, about a plan to expand the denial of rights to all prisoners of the state. Who doesn't want to streamline procedures? It sounds like they want to make sure that people get speedy and uncomplicated justice.
But that's what Habeas Corpus already guarantees. This is like Clear Skies, or Operation Iraqi Freedom - another act of Minitrue to camoflage their Orwellian goals of making it more difficult for people to challenge their accusers.
In a country which has authorized the use of torture to extract confessions.
There are a few people who naively say things like "but since revoking habeas corpus altogether is unconstitutional, won't any such law be struck down even if they do pass such a bill?"
In the ideal world, perhaps. But who will do the striking? Torture you may recall is repeatedly prohibited here. There is no such abstraction, things do not just happen, people - real, specific, individual people have to make them happen, and if they don't, if they are too frightened or apathetic, then no, no one will enforce the law, punish the perverters of justice and make them stop.
How long will it take? How long did the Terror last? Or the Spanish Inquisition? The Czarist oppression, or American apartheid and unequal justice? How much much horror will a people stand, before it occurs to them that it isn't just going to happen to poor people, brown people, foreigners, the unworthy, and it's time for them to take a stand? That yes, the consequences of turning a blind eye are turning out to be worse than otherwise?
History says, a whole lot. And that the backlash, the longer reform is delayed, is the worse.
*(Yes, I know it hasn't really ended. That's part of the point.)