Douglas Herman
Killing Habeas Corpus
Sun Nov 19, 2006 13:31
Killing Habeas Corpus
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/mca-2006.htm
During his October 18, 2006 broadcast of MSNBC's Special Report, commentator Keith Olbermann chided President Bush for signing the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law.
While we certainly don't agree with every detail of Olbermann's commentary, a recent MSNBC news article printed excerpts which we certainly find to be right on target:
We have lived as if in a trance.
We have lived as people in fear.
And now – our rights and our freedoms in peril – we slowly awake to learn that we have been afraid of the wrong thing.
Therefore, tonight, we have become the true inheritors of our American legacy.
For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:
A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from. http://www.jbs.org/node/1452
--------------------------------------
Douglas Herman
UPDATE: Count The Votes - The MCA Torture Bill Didn't Pass
Wed Nov 8, 2006 01:45
Count The Votes - The MCA Torture Bill Didn't Pass
By Douglas Herman
11-4-6
http://www.rense.com/general74/pass.htm
Am I missing something or did the Military Commissions Act pass the Senate using fuzzy math? Please explain to me how 65 votes out of 99 Senate votes cast equals two thirds majority? Seems they missed by one vote.
According to the link at Wikipedia (below) the Torture Bill breezed through the House of Representatives with a passing vote. Such luminaries as Florida representative, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, self-styled critic of Cuba' s torture regime, voted to continue the US government-sponsored torture sessions at Quantanamo prison in Cuba. Not content with Gitmo, IRL and her co-conspirators voted to add MORE torture provisions to the US government here in the country that gave her shelter. From torture.
Then the good old boys in the Senate got to vote on the Torture Bill. Championed by other victims of torture like John McCain, they followed the example of Ros-Lehtinen, figuring that what was good for Communist military dictatorships overseas must be good for America .
So these worthies stomped on the Bill of Rights and pissed on the graves of REAL patriots like Madison, Jefferson and Franklin, and passed a bill into law allowing state security (SS) orgs to arrest anyone, torture them and hold them indefinitely without recourse.
But wait.
Did the law really pass?
I counted 65 votes of approval from the Reichstag, I mean Senate. Here are the House votes (HR 6166) and the US Senate votes (S3930).
To pass, the Senate would have needed at least 67 Ayes. Or 66-33 if one senator abstained. Correct? GOP Senators Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) signaled their support but, at the last minute, Snowe dodged the vote by being absent. Guess the good people of Maine must have flooded her office with calls. Thank you Maine .
At least two-dozen former military leaders penned a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee outlining their objections to the bill (But, who gives a damn what high-ranking military leaders think, right?) They rightly believed the bill would put U.S. military personnel---captured soldiers as prisoners of war--- at risk in current and future military conflicts. Some expressed their concern that the bill would weaken the moral authority of the U.S. in the War on Terror.
But NEARLY two thirds of US Senators, lacking in spine and moral authority, and having no grasp of history or the US Constitution (That goddamned piece of paper), decided to vote for 666, otherwise known as the Military Commissions Act.
BUT wait once again. They were still a few quislings short.
34 Senators voted No while Olympia Snowe remained a no show. So, it seems as if the Act never passed and whatever goddamned piece of paper GWB signed into law was illegal.
USAF veteran and Constitutional Rights Scholar (actually just an Intern) Douglas Herman writes regularly for Rense. Email him if you know how the MCA passed. Douglasherman7@yahoo.com
http://www.rense.com/general74/pass.htm
--------------------------------------
BACKGROUND BRIEF O N
THE CASE AGAINST RUMSFELD, GONZALES AND OTHERS
FILED IN GERMANY ON NOVEMBER 14, 2006
The November 14, 2006, criminal complaint is a request for the German Federal Prosecutor to open an investigation and, ultimately, a criminal prosecution that will look into the responsibility of high-ranking U.S. officials for authorizing war crimes in the context of the so-called “War on Terror.” The complaint is brought on behalf of 12 torture victims – 11 Iraqi citizens who were held at Abu Ghraib prison and one Guantánamo detainee – and is being filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Republican Attorneys' Association (RAV) and others, all represented by Berlin Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck. The complaint is related to a 2004 complaint that was dismissed, but the new complaint is filed with much new evidence, new defendants and plaintiffs, a new German Federal Prosecutor and, most important, under new circumstances that include the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 in the U.S. granting officials retroactive immunity from prosecution for war crimes.
Executive Summary of the Complaint’s Allegations:
http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/other_pdf/Background_Brief_on_German_Case.html
Bush's 'interrogation' act takes away rights of every U.S. citizen
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/mca-2006.htm
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/mca-2006.htm
During his October 18, 2006 broadcast of MSNBC's Special Report, commentator Keith Olbermann chided President Bush for signing the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law.
While we certainly don't agree with every detail of Olbermann's commentary, a recent MSNBC news article printed excerpts which we certainly find to be right on target:
We have lived as if in a trance.
We have lived as people in fear.
And now – our rights and our freedoms in peril – we slowly awake to learn that we have been afraid of the wrong thing.
Therefore, tonight, we have become the true inheritors of our American legacy.
For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:
A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from. http://www.jbs.org/node/1452
--------------------------------------
Douglas Herman
UPDATE: Count The Votes - The MCA Torture Bill Didn't Pass
Wed Nov 8, 2006 01:45
Count The Votes - The MCA Torture Bill Didn't Pass
By Douglas Herman
11-4-6
http://www.rense.com/general74/pass.htm
Am I missing something or did the Military Commissions Act pass the Senate using fuzzy math? Please explain to me how 65 votes out of 99 Senate votes cast equals two thirds majority? Seems they missed by one vote.
According to the link at Wikipedia (below) the Torture Bill breezed through the House of Representatives with a passing vote. Such luminaries as Florida representative, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, self-styled critic of Cuba' s torture regime, voted to continue the US government-sponsored torture sessions at Quantanamo prison in Cuba. Not content with Gitmo, IRL and her co-conspirators voted to add MORE torture provisions to the US government here in the country that gave her shelter. From torture.
Then the good old boys in the Senate got to vote on the Torture Bill. Championed by other victims of torture like John McCain, they followed the example of Ros-Lehtinen, figuring that what was good for Communist military dictatorships overseas must be good for America .
So these worthies stomped on the Bill of Rights and pissed on the graves of REAL patriots like Madison, Jefferson and Franklin, and passed a bill into law allowing state security (SS) orgs to arrest anyone, torture them and hold them indefinitely without recourse.
But wait.
Did the law really pass?
I counted 65 votes of approval from the Reichstag, I mean Senate. Here are the House votes (HR 6166) and the US Senate votes (S3930).
To pass, the Senate would have needed at least 67 Ayes. Or 66-33 if one senator abstained. Correct? GOP Senators Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) signaled their support but, at the last minute, Snowe dodged the vote by being absent. Guess the good people of Maine must have flooded her office with calls. Thank you Maine .
At least two-dozen former military leaders penned a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee outlining their objections to the bill (But, who gives a damn what high-ranking military leaders think, right?) They rightly believed the bill would put U.S. military personnel---captured soldiers as prisoners of war--- at risk in current and future military conflicts. Some expressed their concern that the bill would weaken the moral authority of the U.S. in the War on Terror.
But NEARLY two thirds of US Senators, lacking in spine and moral authority, and having no grasp of history or the US Constitution (That goddamned piece of paper), decided to vote for 666, otherwise known as the Military Commissions Act.
BUT wait once again. They were still a few quislings short.
34 Senators voted No while Olympia Snowe remained a no show. So, it seems as if the Act never passed and whatever goddamned piece of paper GWB signed into law was illegal.
USAF veteran and Constitutional Rights Scholar (actually just an Intern) Douglas Herman writes regularly for Rense. Email him if you know how the MCA passed. Douglasherman7@yahoo.com
http://www.rense.com/general74/pass.htm
--------------------------------------
BACKGROUND BRIEF O N
THE CASE AGAINST RUMSFELD, GONZALES AND OTHERS
FILED IN GERMANY ON NOVEMBER 14, 2006
The November 14, 2006, criminal complaint is a request for the German Federal Prosecutor to open an investigation and, ultimately, a criminal prosecution that will look into the responsibility of high-ranking U.S. officials for authorizing war crimes in the context of the so-called “War on Terror.” The complaint is brought on behalf of 12 torture victims – 11 Iraqi citizens who were held at Abu Ghraib prison and one Guantánamo detainee – and is being filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Republican Attorneys' Association (RAV) and others, all represented by Berlin Attorney Wolfgang Kaleck. The complaint is related to a 2004 complaint that was dismissed, but the new complaint is filed with much new evidence, new defendants and plaintiffs, a new German Federal Prosecutor and, most important, under new circumstances that include the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and the passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 in the U.S. granting officials retroactive immunity from prosecution for war crimes.
Executive Summary of the Complaint’s Allegations:
http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/other_pdf/Background_Brief_on_German_Case.html
Bush's 'interrogation' act takes away rights of every U.S. citizen
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/mca-2006.htm
- Want to End the War? Ask for Investigations! — by davidswanson, Sun Nov 19 13:39
- Re: The CIA also declined to comment. — CBS 5 SAN JOSE, Sun Nov 19 17:49
- CIA analysis finds no Iranian nuclear weapons — By Agence France-Presse, Sun Nov 19 18:07
- U.S. Soldiers Who Say No to Iraq — Mission Rejected, Sun Nov 19 15:01
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