Sept. 5, 2006
Congress, Fight Back More And Harder!
Prospect: From Signing Statements To Surveillance, Stop Bush
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No past president has issued such statements nearly as often, or with the same intent to nullify restrictions on his power, as President Bush has. (AP)
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Interactive Domestic Surveillance The debate over the Bush administration's controversial wiretapping program.
Congress returns from recess this month to confront fundamental questions presented by the president's five-year long global "war on terrorism." On the table is nothing less than the future scope of presidential power, with battles looming over military trials, detainee treatment, and domestic surveillance. In the past several months, courts have dealt the administration a series of setbacks on these issues. Undeterred, the president intends to reverse those defeats by asking lawmakers for even greater authority. The ball is now in their court.
Military trials top the legislative agenda. The impetus is the Supreme Court's recent decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld striking down the president's military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. Hamdan did not rule out military trials for suspected terrorists but found that the current commissions exceeded the limits imposed by Congress and by the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Rather than conforming trials to U.S. court-martial procedures, as the Court said the law requires, the administration now wants to change the law. The administration's draft military commission bill, leaked to The New York Times in July, suggests the position it will stake out in the upcoming legislative session. The bill allows secret evidence and denies defendants the right to be present at trial. In also makes conspiracy a war crime, a change that would contradict the opinion of at least four Supreme Court Justices as well as a half-century of international jurisprudence.
Hamdan's impact, however, goes beyond military commissions. The president had previously insisted that the Geneva Conventions did not protect alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban members because they were "unlawful combatants." The administration said it would treat the detainees humanely, but only to the extent consistent with military necessity. Without any legal protections, the "gloves came off," as a former CIA official put it, leading to rampant detainee abuse at Guantanamo, in secret jails overseas, and in Iraq, where military officials "Gitmoized" detention operations at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. In Hamdan, the Court rejected this effort to build prisons beyond the law when it determined that, at a minimum, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to all detainees in U.S. custody. Common Article 3 does not just require fair trials; it also prohibits mistreatment and abuse of detainees, which, as military officials have argued since the outset, safeguards U.S. servicemen and women as well.
By Jonathan Hafetz
Reprinted with permission from The American Prospect, 5 Broad Street, Boston, MA 02109. All rights reserved.
| The American Prospect is America's leading liberal magazine of politics, a blend of essay, criticism, investigation,commentary, and in-depth analysis. |
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- Congress must not allow GWB to do an end-run around the Constitution. The FISA laws were put into the books PRECISELY to keep an out of control executive from abusing power. Signing statements and other egregious power grabs must be stopped before we slide further into a dictatorial nightmare.
AG Alberto Gonzalez is no longer "house counsel" for the Bush family and he should not be allowed to operate as such. - Reply to this comment
- Short while to November elections...but a long, long stretch until 2008 to remove this "supreme anarchist" from power over a free republic! We certainly ARE fighting nazis...right here in our own government! Connect the dots.
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- The Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, The Senate should have done to G.W. Bush and his staff what G.W's parents should have done years ago; SLAP THAT FOOL IN THE FACE.
To bad for us, most of the above protections from presidential abuse will not be put in check with the RUBBER STAMP united GOP. That's why we need to VOTE these mindless talking point passing Republicans out of power, and replace them with folks who can think freely and listen. If we don't we'll be high on money and low on cash for the rest of our lives. Remember this: The days are long but the weeks are fast. So the next time cursory leaders want to take power in the United States, I'm not going to let them use up a tenth of my life doing it. - Reply to this comment
- The Geneva Convention deals with treatment of uniformed soldiers it does not deal with terrorist who have no allience with any country.Government monitering of conversations with persons on known terror list is needed to protect its population......."Connect The Dots"
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- Saddam Hussain was a bad guy against those people of his country who wanted to establish a Radical Islamic Govt.He was good for catholic in Iraq because he didn't have any problem of power from them as he knew that in a muslim country nobody would like to see a catholic being president.By American Tax payer's money Saddam Hussain has been removed from power and those radicals have been brought into power whose elected prime ministers'll always practically be the Governors of Iraq from Iran.
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- The Geneva Conventions and the FISA law of 1978 were both conclusions based upon lessons from history. The Geneva Conventions arose from the horrible acts that occurred in WWII. The FISA law derived from the horrible acts of President Nixon. Yet, this administration insists on bypassing these laws. They don't want to be beholden to history. Yet, what they keep failing to understand is that they are SLAVES to history. By not following the lessons from the past they are doomed to repeat these errors, and at what cost to our great nation?
Please President Bush, follow our laws! - Reply to this comment
- The Geneva Conventions and the FISA law of 1978 were both conclusions based upon lessons from history. The Geneva Conventions arose from the horrible acts that occurred in WWII. The FISA law derived from the horrible acts of President Nixon. Yet, this administration insists on bypassing these laws. They don't want to be beholden to history. Yet, what they keep failing to understand is that they are SLAVES to history. By not following the lessons from the past they are doomed to repeat these errors, and at what cost to our great nation?
Please President Bush, follow our laws! - Reply to this comment
- The Geneva Conventions and the FISA law of 1978 were both conclusions based upon lessons from history. The Geneva Conventions arised from the horrible acts that occurred in WWII. The FISA law derived from the horrible acts of President Nixon. Yet, this administration keeps wanting to bypass these laws. They don't want to be beholden to history. Yet, what they keep failing to understand is that they are SLAVES to history. By not following the lessons from the past they are doomed to repeat these errors, and at what consequence to our great nation?
To President Bush: Follow the laws! - Reply to this comment
- The Geneva Conventions and the FISA law of 1978 were both conclusions based upon lessons from history. The Geneva Conventions arised from the horrible acts that occurred in WWII. The FISA law derived from the horrible acts of President Nixon. Yet, this administration keeps wanting to bypass these laws. They don't want to be beholden to history. Yet, what they keep failing to understand is that they are SLAVES to history. By not following the lessons from the past they are doomed to repeat these errors, and at what consequence to our great nation?
To President Bush: Follow the laws! - Reply to this comment
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- We now have our very own 21st century Don Quijote!
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