Originally posted by sh76How about living in a country that if you piss off the wrong person you can be labeled a terrorist and denied counsel. You can be denied a speedy trial. ====
===For me so far it is living in a country that now monitors phone conversations. It started off they would monitor only calls placed and recieved to and from locations outside the USA. Now it is everyone.===
The warrant requirement to record phone conversations still exists.
====How about living in a country that if you piss off the wrong person you ca ...[text shortened]... don't worry. We're not a police state and we're not going to become one any time soon.
SH: How many times has this happened to US residents who were not captured during a foreign wars?
Does the name "Jose Padillla" ring a bell?
Originally posted by no1marauderJose Padilla was given a civilian trial and found guilty by a civilian jury. Granted, his trial wasn't very "speedy."
How about living in a country that if you piss off the wrong person you can be labeled a terrorist and denied counsel. You can be denied a speedy trial. ====
SH: How many times has this happened to US residents who were not captured during a foreign wars?
Does the name "Jose Padillla" ring a bell?
Originally posted by sh76He was labelled a terrorist i.e. an "illegal enemy combatant" .
Jose Padilla was given a civilian trial and found guilty by a civilian jury. Granted, his trial wasn't very "speedy."
He was denied counsel for many months.
He was held for 3 1/2 years before trial.
I'd say the other poster has a clear example. We both know there are others.
During the last Administration, and for the first time in US history, American citizens were seized by the executive branch of government and put in prison without being charged with a crime, without having the right to a trial, without being able to see a lawyer, and without being able to contact their families.
President Bush claimed the unilateral right to do that to any American citizen he believed was an “enemy combatant.” Those are the magic words. If the President alone decides that those two words accurately describe someone, then that person can be immediately locked up and held incommunicado for as long as the President wants, with no court having the right to determine whether the facts actually justify his imprisonment.
So a constitutional right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness that we used to think of in an old-fashioned way as “inalienable” can now be instantly stripped from any American by the President with no meaningful review by any other branch of government.
How do we feel about that? Is that OK?
Originally posted by ScriabinTo take No1's example, Jose Padilla, was there or was there not "meaningful review" of the case by another branch of government?
So a constitutional right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness that we used to think of in an old-fashioned way as “inalienable” can now be instantly stripped from any American by the President with no meaningful review by any other branch of government.
Originally posted by no1marauderAssuming, arguendo, that Bush was unjustified in what the administration did to Padilla, an isolated incident does not mean that the administration "took away the liberty" of the American people as a whole.
He was labelled a terrorist i.e. an "illegal enemy combatant" .
He was denied counsel for many months.
He was held for 3 1/2 years before trial.
I'd say the other poster has a clear example. We both know there are others.
Would one be justified in calling the entire NYPD racist sadistic torturers because of the Louima case?
In any case, yes, it took some time, but the judicial branch did remedy the Padilla case. That's not the same thing as the President having the unchecked authority to do what he wants.
Originally posted by sh76can be any more dense? perhaps you desire that light bend around you?
Assuming, arguendo, that Bush was unjustified in what the administration did to Padilla, an isolated incident does not mean that the administration "took away the liberty" of the American people as a whole.
Would one be justified in calling the entire NYPD racist sadistic torturers because of the Louima case?
In any case, yes, it took some time, but the j ...[text shortened]... hat's not the same thing as the President having the unchecked authority to do what he wants.
even without a single instance, the authority provided under the Patriot Act, in and of itself, raises the very concerns expressed.
yes, a law does take way the liberty of the American people as a whole.
or did you perhaps get your Juris Doctor from a differently clued institution?
Looking back on American history, what we now call Civil Liberties have often been abused and limited during times of war and perceived threats to security.
The best known instances include the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798-1800, the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the abuses during World War I and the Red Scare and Palmer Raids immediately after the war, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the FBI and CIA excesses during the Vietnam War, and the social turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In each of these cases, the USA recovered its equilibrium when the war ended and absorbed the lessons learned in a recurring cycle of excess and regret.
There are reasons for concern this time around that what we went through in the Bush years and continue to experience may no longer be the first half of a recurring cycle but rather, the beginning of something new.
This effort against terrorism directed at the USA may come to resemble the “war” against drugs and become a more or less permanent struggle occupying a significant part of the US law enforcement and security agenda from now on.
If that is the case, then when – if ever -- does this encroachment on our freedoms end?
The loss of civil liberties by individuals and the aggregation of too much unchecked power in the executive are not unrelated -- they are aspects of the same thing.
The Bush Administration politicized law enforcement as part of their larger agenda to roll back the changes in government policy brought about by the New Deal and the Progressive Movement. Toward that end, they cut back on Civil Rights enforcement, Women’s Rights, progressive taxation, the estate tax, access to the courts, among other things. They approached every issue as a partisan fight, even in the areas of national security and terror.
Instead of trying to make the “War on Terrorism” a bipartisan cause, the Bush White House consistently tried to exploit it for partisan advantage. Bush verbally went to war against terrorists in virtually every campaign speech and fundraising dinner for his political party, making fear into the major plank of his political platform. Fear was his main political theme. Democratic candidates like Max Cleland in Georgia were labeled unpatriotic for voting differently from the White House on obscure amendments to the Homeland Security Bill.
When the former Republican leader in the House of Representatives, Tom DeLay, was embroiled in an effort to pick up more congressional seats in Texas by forcing a highly unusual redistricting vote in the state senate, he was able to track down Democratic legislators who fled the state to prevent a quorum (and thus prevent the vote) by enlisting the help of Bush’s new Department of Homeland Security, as many as 13 employees of the Federal Aviation Administration who conducted an eight-hour search, and at least one FBI agent (though several other agents who were asked to help refused to do so.)
By locating the Democrats quickly with the technology put in place for tracking terrorists, the Republicans were able to succeed in focusing public pressure on the weakest of the Senators and forced passage of their new political redistricting plan.
Thanks in part to the efforts of three different federal agencies, Bush and DeLay celebrated the temporary gain of new Republican congressional seats in Congress at the time.
The White House timing for its big push for a vote in Congress on going to war with Iraq also coincided with the start of the fall election campaign in September that year.
The President’s chief of staff said the timing was chosen because “from a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”