More fun with graphs
President in Washington, DC $144,000
Vice President in Washington, DC $150,000
The Constitution of the United States in Washington, DC $0,000
View Larger Salary Graph
So btw, in case anyone has missed this bit of news, it appears that the terrorists HAVE won. The US Senate has passed a bill suspending habeas corpus -- the right against arbitrary imprisonment. Not that this right hasn't been suspended before -- the administration's defenders are quick to point out it's happened in the past and then was restored without the country turning into some sort of fascist banana republic -- but in the past, it at least happened in accordance with their Constitution, which states: "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." (Article 1, sec. 9). Rebellion, as was the case with the Civil War; invasion, as was at least flimsily arguable in the case of Pearl Harbour and takeover of various US properties in the Pacific during WWII. But to hold that the "enemy combatants" being held in the various Gulags constitute either a rebellion or an invading force goes right past flimsily arguable into loony-tunes. But then, that bridge has already been crossed when prisoner suicides were rebranded as "asymmetric warfare". "I did not have sex with the corpse of this woman, The Statue of Liberty" next?
The bill also delightfully weasels around judicial review and the Geneva Convention, redefines torture as not-torture and slavery as freedom, specifies that there are 5 lights where formerly were 4, etc. Here're some people talking about this and its repercussions much better than I can:
Rushing off a cliff (a New York Times editorial listing some of the bill's biggest flaws (Habeas corpus is just a small part of it))
Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)
and Uh... the people who made this will go jail FIRST.