Scariest thing I've heard recently...
... (although it may well be eclipsed by saber-rattling towards Iran in tonight's SOTU speech).
Stephen Colbert beat me to it, but I had to talk about this quote by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales speaking to Congress last week. I heard this on the radio when I was driving, and was just flat-out floored.
"There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away...
"The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.
Any thinking person would assume that it was phrased that way based on the Founder's assumption that the right of habeas corpus, a fixture of English common law stating the government can't just lock people up without a trial, was a basic right. Thus, they only felt it necessary to limit the circumstances under which this right could be suspended to specific national crises. And by stating it this way, they were in fact establishing habeas corpus as a right in American law.
Never let it be said that the Bush administration is beleagured by thinking people. Unless you consider weaseling ways around patently clear prohibitions on their abuse of power demonstrative of careful thought. Like most neocons, Gonzales is incapable of empathy or the imagination necessary to put himself in the shoes of a person confined indefinitely without charge; he is close enough and loyal enough to the center of power that he is sure it will never be used against him. Apparently, neither can most of the rest of the country, as they snooze happily through the daylight larceny of their basic rights.
But it gets worse, according to Robert Parry:
While Gonzales’s statement has a measure of quibbling precision to it, his logic is troubling because it would suggest that many other fundamental rights that Americans hold dear also don’t exist because the Constitution often spells out those rights in the negative.
For instance, the First Amendment declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Applying Gonzales’s reasoning, one could argue that the First Amendment doesn’t explicitly say Americans have the right to worship as they choose, speak as they wish or assemble peacefully. The amendment simply bars the government, i.e. Congress, from passing laws that would impinge on these rights.
Apparently, what it will take for Americans to wake up and see these sociopathic cretins as the danger they are is for white, straight, Christian, Midwesterners to be rounded up en masse. (They're already coming for the brown people.) Note to nation: by then? It will be far too late.
Is it 2008 yet?
Stephen Colbert beat me to it, but I had to talk about this quote by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales speaking to Congress last week. I heard this on the radio when I was driving, and was just flat-out floored.
"There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away...
"The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.
Any thinking person would assume that it was phrased that way based on the Founder's assumption that the right of habeas corpus, a fixture of English common law stating the government can't just lock people up without a trial, was a basic right. Thus, they only felt it necessary to limit the circumstances under which this right could be suspended to specific national crises. And by stating it this way, they were in fact establishing habeas corpus as a right in American law.
Never let it be said that the Bush administration is beleagured by thinking people. Unless you consider weaseling ways around patently clear prohibitions on their abuse of power demonstrative of careful thought. Like most neocons, Gonzales is incapable of empathy or the imagination necessary to put himself in the shoes of a person confined indefinitely without charge; he is close enough and loyal enough to the center of power that he is sure it will never be used against him. Apparently, neither can most of the rest of the country, as they snooze happily through the daylight larceny of their basic rights.
But it gets worse, according to Robert Parry:
While Gonzales’s statement has a measure of quibbling precision to it, his logic is troubling because it would suggest that many other fundamental rights that Americans hold dear also don’t exist because the Constitution often spells out those rights in the negative.
For instance, the First Amendment declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Applying Gonzales’s reasoning, one could argue that the First Amendment doesn’t explicitly say Americans have the right to worship as they choose, speak as they wish or assemble peacefully. The amendment simply bars the government, i.e. Congress, from passing laws that would impinge on these rights.
Apparently, what it will take for Americans to wake up and see these sociopathic cretins as the danger they are is for white, straight, Christian, Midwesterners to be rounded up en masse. (They're already coming for the brown people.) Note to nation: by then? It will be far too late.
Is it 2008 yet?