<p>“In short, the bill opens the gates for any American to be jailed at whim and denied their rights to due process, habeas corpus and a trial by jury of their peers…Absent from any discussion is who is going to protect Americans from the Executive branch, whether headed by President Bush or any other future president who continues to amass power in the White House.”</p>
<p>It’s not about loving peace; the John Birchers are as hawkish as anyone. It’s about loving the Constitution. </p>
<p>I suspect you haven’t given much thoughtful consideration to U.S. history, if you believe that the executive branch of our country should have unchecked arrest and execution powers. Imagine what an Adams or a Nixon or (for the right wing conspiracy buffs) even a Clinton would have done with it.</p>
<p>The interesting thing is how little Americans realize how WEAK the executive is compared to say…England. Imagine being a Tory in the good ol’ UK and watching Blair tear through laws like an elephant in an ant farm.</p>
<p>Now THAT’S policy implementation.</p>
<p>I don’t know how much I want to take the high and mighty grad student route, but trust me on something here: Bush ain’t nothin’.</p>
<p>So right now we have laws that say that the government can put Americans to death on the basis of “confessions” they extracted from people under torture. I get rounded up and tortured till I give them your name; then you get rounded up and tortured till you agree to something incriminating just to make it stop. Now it’s lights out for you…but not till you’ve given them a dozen or so more names to work with.</p>
<p>This was how McCarthyism worked, but people only had their lives ruined, not taken, and the torture was more psychological and economic than physical. The only other time I can think of that we had a climate like this on our shores, where it was accompanied by legal executions, it was 1600s Salem…and that was a theocracy; the US and it’s Constitution were a century or more away.</p>
<p>In the long run, it really doesn’t matter whether you do or you don’t believe that the administration will abuse this power. The fact that they have it at all goes against everything our country stands for…and sets our country’s value system back 400 years.</p>
<p>Evidently some people don’t like me because I had the audacity to post a controversial thread (‘Seeking Physics Scholars’ which is actually quite related to this thread, btw) in the College Community Cafe section of the forum. I am fairly new to this board and I posted that before realizing that it was a student forum. I thought it was the ‘off-topic’ section of the board.</p>
<p>I see now that it is apparently the off-topic section for students, and ‘Parent Cafe’ is the off-topic section for parents.</p>
<p>So now some of the students who were following that thread have followed me here, and continue to fling insults. They have been calling me ‘stupid’ and ‘crazy’ for having a different opinion.</p>
<p>Amazing how some of these people get into college.</p>
<p>UCLAri - Blair is not a member of the executive branch, since England doesn’t have an executive branch. Theirs is a different form of government. In fact, you might even think that our form of government was created to avoid the problems inherent in the British form of government. . . . . . . </p>
<p>But it is not that common for all 3 of our branches of government to be in the same hands, as they are now, so the checks and balances are a little out of balance. But that’s what the US public voted for.</p>
<p>I have long believed that, just as monopoly is the economic form that all free markets gravitate toward if left unchecked, the most natural form of government is concentrated power, whether in the hands of a class, a family, or a person. That’s why we have to do everything we can to perserve our republic.</p>
Conyat, I’m not sure what your source of information is, but I seriously think that you should consider getting another source - you are way off base.</p>
<p>Oh? Please point me to the legal safeguards that are in place to prevent this from happening. You’ve already tried once to reassure us by implying (inaccurately) that Americans can’t be declared enemy combatants, so I hope you’ll forgive me for wanting to know your sources.</p>
<p>At this point, there is no legal access to judicial review for those declared enemy combatants. None. As has been put eloquently by one writer, “You can only hope that that person is not you.”</p>
<p>As has been posted multiple times, this law does not apply to American citizens. So, no Americans will be “put to death” as a result of any confessions. Those who are not American citizens will also be afforded judicial review of their cases.</p>
<p>You can post it again and again, but it doesn’t make it true. It won’t change the widely documented fact that the law DOES apply to American citizens.</p>
<p>From the actual legislation:</p>
<p>The term “unlawful enemy combatant” means: (i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or associated forces); or (ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the president or the secretary of defense.</p>
<p>Nowhere does it say that citizens can’t be charged. Sorry.</p>
<p>I agree with conyat. You really have to read the fine print on these things - that’s how they sneak things in and get away with it.</p>
<p>There’s this military guy at work who told me that he was trained in the USAF that during time of war, anyone who even speaks ill of the ‘president’ can be considered a traitor, gulity of treason.</p>
<p>This guy was in the Gulf War and his wife is currently in Iraq, so this is recent. Dissent is supposed to be one of our inalienable rights, yet, ever since the capitalization of 911 for ulterior motives, there has been an attitude that anyone who questions the govt is ‘unAmerican’ or ‘hates our country.’</p>
<p>It’s not much of a stretch to see such people labeled ‘enemy combatants’ at the discretion of those who don’t like what they are saying.</p>
<p>The charges were eventually dropped, because this happened before the new law. The man was able to challenge his arrest in court. What would happen to him today?</p>
<p>lealdragon, my advice to you is similar to that for conyat - if you want to get constitutional knowledge, a “military guy from work” is generally not your most reliable source.</p>
<p>No, but I think the actual legislation is a better source about what the legislation says than a clipping from a website, a clipping that addresses only a small part of a very large bill.</p>
<p>Good heavens, have my words ever been twisted.</p>
<p>Where did I say that the military guy was the source of my constitutional knowledge? I merely gave that as an example of how the lack of Habeas Corpus MIGHT be applied to US citizens.</p>
<p>I never said that Blair was part of the executive branch. I said that he’s an executive. There’s a difference. Executives in Westminster systems tend to be FAR more powerful than executives in presidential systems, hands down.</p>
<p>Uh, yeah. It’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention. Whether you believe the 911 truth movement or not, it’s common knowledge that they were planning to invade Iraq long before 911, and just used 911 as an excuse. That’s very documented, even in mainstream media.</p>