Habeas Corpus
I seem to be pimping for Obama this week.
In any case, a rather important bill just avoided having some ammendments added. The bill gives the president the ability to decide what is and is not in the Geneva Conventions, not to mention removing the protection of Habeas Corpus from select individuals. Obama commented on an amendment that would have helped reduce some of the most glaring deficiencies in this bill (Sponsored for what it’s worth, by a Republican). Those amendments are now rejected.
A quote from his statement:
A few years ago, I gave a speech in Boston that people talk about from time to time. In that speech, I spoke about why I love this country, why I love America, and what I believe sets this country apart from so many other nations in so many areas. I said:
That is the true genius of America–a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door. …..
Without hearing a sudden knock on the door. I bring this up because what is at stake in this bill, and in the amendment that is currently being debated, is the right, in some sense, for people who hear that knock on the door and are placed in detention because the Government suspects them of terrorist activity to effectively challenge their detention by our Government.
The speech might be seen as partisan, and it is certainly attacking the president, however I feel that these thoughts are important and need to be heard. Just remember, sometimes even governments make mistakes. The right to appeal to a court when you feel a mistake has been made is one of the oldest parts of English Common Law. It seems like a bad idea to eliminate that.
September 30th, 2006 at 15:08
The habeas corpus is an essential tenet of English law.
However, it is predicated upon dealings within a civil society. How would you deal with people who find the mere existence of such a society anathema?
This is a delicate problem when facing the modern Terror threats. To be efficient, it needs to rely on some sort of preemptive intelligence, in the sense of acting on suspicions BEFORE the crime/terror attack has taken place, rather than inverstigating after the fact.
I am not sure how to reconcile this with the Habeas corpus, but with the current approaches, a thought police is not very far…
October 3rd, 2006 at 10:42
Let me begin by stating that I am not a lawyer, and thus have very little insight into how these issues play out in a court of law. However, having read the British version of the Habeas Corpus act, it is unclear to me how it is predicated on a civil society. It seems to me that all it is, is a protection of the people from a tyrannical government, of which they had many back in the times of monarchy, when they first thought it up. Because of this I find the question of how we deal with these people a separate issue.
So how do we deal with these people? Careful intelligence gathering, strong laws against planning terrorist attacks, and outreach to communities that might be able to aid us in our fight. The problem is people who are tossed into jail, kept there for four years, never being charged with anything, and then released. There are about 14,000 prisoners in the war on terror and “the Defense Department is expected to prosecute fewer than two dozen”. So what about the rest? Why don’t they get to appeal their detention? The FBI dealt with homegrown terror quite effectively by infiltrating cells, but as that interview points out, that sort of thing is being done less now. So do we just start sending everyone from Michigan to gitmo? We need to figure out what works and concentrate on that. Also, if the government really believes that it’s evidence is so secret that it can’t be told in a court, then use secret courts ala FISA. There are ways to do these things outside of simply abandoning the protections altogether.