I am back and have been lurking for a bit. I did not intend to post for another week or two. In my initial post I said that occasionally something would cause me to “blow a gasket”: Habeas corpus is that something. Since King John at Runnymede was compelled to accept the Magna Carta, the right of an individual to demand access to judicial process has been the foundation stone of constitutional government.
Dicey wrote that the Habeas Corpus Acts “declare no principle and define no rights, but they are for practical purposes worth a hundred constitutional articles guaranteeing individual liberty”
While I have been away, I have apparently missed some fun jesting about ‘meta-context’. This is a serious example of it.
In its simplest and most fundamental way, this is about tribalism. This is about who ‘we’ are. Who we see our selves as. Are we defined by our geographical boundaries? Is ‘American’ a tribal bond? Or are we the citizens of our constitution? Have we charged our government with protecting its own sovereignty and security by exchanging it for that of its citizens? Or have we charged it with protecting all citizens from violation of their personal sovereignty by all powers. Are we, the citizens, not the fundamental reason for our government? If it will not abide by its contract with us, is it truly still our government? At what point does it become an occupying power?
It is babies and bathwater. More than that, it is meta-context. Underpinning assumptions about collectivism vs individualism. Did you happen to notice that Attorney General Gonzales singled out individuals and citizens:
I meant by that comment, the Constitution doesn’t say, “Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.” It doesn’t say that.
Our constitution assigns the writing of laws to 535 legislators and their sub-ordinates. It assigns the interpretation of those laws to 9 justices and their sub-ordinates. It assigns the execution of those laws to the President and his sub-ordinates. The congress and the courts have no means of enforcing the constitution or the laws sub-ordinate to it. If congress writes and the court accepts (on challenge) a law, the executive must enforce it.
We have an executive that has taken unto himself both the judicial and the legislative functions. When the executive goes unilateral on his own citizens, there is no physical means short of the several state’s militias to stop him. The executive controls all of the means of execution.
Did you hear Senator Specter’s closing remark? That bit about “treading on your interdiction” was not random babblespeak. Interdiction in law is ‘prohibition by court order’. What Senator Specter was saying is that he believed the Attorney General may be ‘walking over’ an order of the Supreme Court. By adding “and violating common sense” the Senator was making clear that he did not believe it was an honest mistake.
The chutzpah shown by the Attorney General’s unapologetic stating of these transparent constitutional rejections before the Senate, the nation, and the world shows an arrogance frightening in its implication.
Without any physical means to defend itself other than a loyal executive authority or the actions of state militias, our constitution is in serious jeopardy as the citadel of our liberties. These statements and the actions they defend make a pathetic joke of Clinton’s impeachment. If ever there was grounds for the impeachment of a president, it is for such bald faced, wilful and calculating violation and defiance of his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
This transcends the creeping totalitarianism we are all justly worried about. This is a bolt between the eyes of the core necessity for a constitutional government. This is a cancellation of the citizens’ right to appeal to the constitution and its laws for just treatment. It does not matter if laws are just if they are not available to be claimed. I think a simple removal of the AG from office would be an acceptable action if combined with an open and verifiable obedience to the laws by the President and the next AG. Barring that, more serious actions must be considered.
I don’t have a huge particular problem with the Supreme Court deciding that habeas corpus applies to noncitizen aliens captured in war, but it is worth noting that the Supreme Court decided otherwise in Johnson v. Eisentrager in 1950, stating that non-citizens who were captured outside the US, tried by a military tribunal, and held outside the US did not have the right to the writ of habeas corpus. Now, the Warren Court later largely extended many of the Constitutional protections to non-citizens and others, but it’s hardly an ancient right that way.
It is an interesting reading indeed that allows a military to kill people, but not to keep them alive and give them a military trial. (Especially considering that that well over 99% of people captured have been released, and most of those that have not are because their home countries will not take them, or else their home countries would torture them and it would be illegal to transfer them.)
State Department attorney John Bellinger has a useful discussion there.
Regarding citizens, it’s also interesting that the writ of habeas corpus apparently did not apply to citizen members of the military appealing courts martial and other military justice until 1951 when the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals’s predeccesor was established, acting important oversight to the process and being empowered to grant writs. Presumably the state before 1950 was viewed as Constitutional even without the lack of habeas corpus, and an example of where it did not apply. I am strongly certain now that it would be viewed as unConstitutional, however.
Until very recently, the US constitution was held to protect everyone in the territory of the United States, not just citizens. Indeed that was one of the official answers to the naturalization quiz.
Likewise the common law in Britain. Anyone could apply for habeas corpus if held without charge or without a case to answer, not just citizens or subjects of the crown. That universalist conception of justice is I suggest even more fundamental than habeas corpus itself. If the government can do anything it likes to foreigners, and it is in charge of determining who is a foreigner, then not only is this morally unsustainable [braces self for onslaught by “progresive nationalists” and others who claim that nations = states = clubs with rules determined on behalf of the collective WE], but no-one is safe.
…even more fundamental than habeas corpus itself…. though, I should add, the intrinsic value of both rules of law is beside the constitutional point that Midwesterner is making. His point would still be right if the constitution said all witches should be burned at the stake, and the executive refused to do it.
Y’know, I just really got how treating the guantanamo prisoners according to our own most ancient conception of justice actually makes sense. Up to now I kind of figured ‘they’re enemy combatants, and they aren’t citizens, so why should they get habeas corpus rights? But, yeah … it’s hard to argue that we’re engaged in a war to spread democracy and the various freedoms if we don’t behave as though those values really deserve to be universal.
John and Guy,
While I understand and agree with your statements regarding non-citizens, they are not in my eyes a fundamental concern. Worrisome, yes. And an amazingly and indicatively telling hypocrisy, but not a structural problem. Relations with non-citizens is legitimately a concern of treaties and intergovernmental relations. But anyone who believes in open immigration must logically accept the application of habeas corpus to all, citizen or not.
John, regarding the substitution of courts martial for habeas corpus (the real civilian courts), it is probably equivalent to the draft. Persons who support conscription probably reject habeas corpus.
Guy, yes to the witches statement. My point is that without habeas corpus, individualism is completely impossible. In it’s most clear form, habeas corpus is the right of the individual to be recognized by the government. When this right is removed, only interest group (mob rule?) politics can can endure.
In actual respect to the witches case, if an executive refuses the authority of the constitution, all the executive needs to do to remain in power is take popular actions. Witches being in a presumed minority they will more likely be burned. We have a regretibly similar contemporary case with politically elected government prosecutors who will violate due process of law to convict an unpopular defendent and win re-election.
I have an interesting constitutional question. The 6th amendment of the bill of rights says one has the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed.
In the case of the Guantanano detainees, this would be someplace in Afghanistan.
The US has the right, indeed the obligation to take prisoners under the Geneva conventions of war criminals; i.e. those who violate the Geneva conventions. This implies it can make arrests for crimes on foreign territory. The constitutional rights seems to be referring to crimes committed on US territory. How do these mesh?
The wording of the 6th could be taken to mean that everyone has a right to trial, and a right for it to be held in the state/district of the crime, and that these are two separate rights which may be exercised separately. In that case, even though the second right is clearly inapplicable, the first remains. Or the two components could be considered components of a single right, which being inapplicable because of part of it is thereby entirely inapplicable.
I also can’t find where the the jurisdiction is specified – it appears to apply to everyone in the world (it just says “people”), except that some of the provisions make no sense when so applied. Does the US constitution apply to foreigners in their own countries, and could some Iranian being sent to an Iranian jail make an appeal for habeas corpus to a US court, which it would be unconstitutional to reject? Or is the true meaning that it is unconstitutional to arrest anyone for crimes committed abroad, and the Geneva convention therefore cannot be made legal in the US?
I get the impression the argument here is not about overturning the constitution, but in identifying the proper definition of jurisdiction where the document itself is vague. Does it mean on US territory, in US custody, of US citizens, or persons/places subject to US law? Or does it really mean everyone?
I don’t know the answer, or even if I’m framing the question correctly. Thoughts?
Pa,
My interpretation of that is that if the detainee committed a US crime, it must have occured in or to a US plaintiff. The way this is usually handled (I believe) is to identify the locus of the crime in the US. I believe most of the off-shore crimes are prosecuted in the district of the plaintiff. If the plaintiff is the US government, then it determines where it is filed.
Regarding jurisdiction, that blanket application is interpretable as meaning that anyone that US government acts have an effect on, has the rights specified under the 7th.
“the US constitution apply to foreigners in their own countries[?]”, my understanding is, to a degree, yes. Example, if two UK citizens sued each other over the assets in a US bank, the bank’s location would establish which district court the case would occur in.
“and could some Iranian being sent to an Iranian jail make an appeal for habeas corpus to a US court[?]” Perhaps, yes. But Iran would of course reject it, therefore we have political asylum. While I don’t think it is presently treated as a case of habeas corpus for foreign citizens, a strong case could be made that it should.
Regarding your last paragraph, “I get the impression the argument here is not about overturning the constitution,” well … Attorney General Gonzales expressly states –
Notice that he said “in the United States”, which violates even the Johnson v. Eisentrager ruling John Thacker cites, and he specifically says “every citizen”, which violates everything he missed with the first clause.
This is the highest law enforcement officer in the nation. His title is “Attorney General”. He is one of the smartest and most dangerous players in executive politics.
Lest you think him a blithering incompentant who badly miss-spoke, and then when challanged ineptly reaffirmed his miss speak in even more concise and confrontational terms, José Padilla. Padilla was held in military prison for 3 1/2 years while every effort was made to prevent him from getting a trial. An American citizen born in New York and arrested in Chicago. But admittedly an unpopular and possibly criminally involved one. 🙂
What he is saying is that habeas corpus is a right granted by another instrument of law (I’m not sure what – I was looking at the bill of rights in an attempt to find it), and that the constitution only forbids its suspension from people who already have the right. If somebody didn’t have the right prior to the constitution, the constitution doesn’t grant it to them. For all those that did have the right to apply for habeas, the constitution prevents states taking it away. The question is therefore whether enemy combatants would have had the right to apply for a writ of habeas corpus if the presidential military order of 13th November 2001 hadn’t been signed. The point is, the constitution does not allow such an order to overthrow habeas, but if the right never existed in the first place, it isn’t an issue.
I can sort of understand the AG’s argument on habeas, what I’m not clear on is whether such a writ would succeed. Habeus is not in fact the right to due process and a trial, as many people seem to think, it’s the right to have a judge decide whether your detention is legal. If the US is legally allowed to detain people without trial, then all habeas will get you is some judge telling you so, and sending you back. The real question is whether they are allowed, under these circumstances, to detain people without trial. The most relevant document I have been able to find was the 6th amendment, which grants the right to a fair trial, but is evidently referring to crimes in the US. How this reflects on Guantanamo is unclear.
Habeas is entirely useless at protecting you from the law, it only protects you from law enforcement acting illegally. As far as I am concerned, it ought to be granted, irrespective. The question of the required standards of due process I am less morally sure of.
The Johnson vs Eisentrager case is interesting (as is Hamdi vs Rumsfeld) in setting out the limits of habeas jurisdiction of whatever it is that grants the right.
I was also interested by one of the reasons for the decision in the Johnson vs Eisentrager case that says:
“If this [Fifth] Amendment invests enemy aliens in unlawful hostile action against us with immunity from military trial, it puts them in a more protected position than our own soldiers.”
Not something that would be considered a problem in today’s judicial climate, I feel.
Section 9 of Article One of the constitution. (Not the bill of rights.)
Yes, that is what he is saying. And he is spectacularly wrong.
Pa. You’re missing the point. The issue is not the question that was asked, ie enemy combatants. It is the answer that was given. “Every individual in the United States”, “every citizen”
Habeas corpus is access to the judicial process. What more need be said? Of course “Habeas is entirely useless at protecting you from the law”. Habeas is your protection BY the law.
And regarding the quote from Johnson vs Eisentrager, remember that military personnel are now protected by habeas via the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. The J v E statement no longer holds.
Matt,
You are right. There is an amazing amount of hypocrisy in this. But the problem is deeper than that. Unfortunately, we are in a campaign to spread democracy. This has been the repeatedly stated goal of every politician who’s opened their mouth yet. This shows just how little the people our system elects know of the government the are part of.
We are not a democracy. We are a constitutional republic. As is often said, democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for lunch. Democracy is a battle for supremacy by mobs.
The civil war in Iraq is not a complicating factor to our quest for democratic government there. It is the inevitable consequence of it!
When we conquered Japan, we handed them their constitution on a platter. It is still pretty much intact. We should have handed Iraq its constitution on a platter. The state of Iraq is an expedited version of what these same abrogations of our constitution are doomed to achieve here.
As is often said, democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for lunch. Democracy is a battle for supremacy by mobs.
Lovely line mid. But not quite right in my book.
Democracy is the expounding of various arguements by which people can choose to be Sheep or wolves.
Who eats who after that is up to them.
I cant get the link to the video up for some reason, so I cant comment on what the senators have said.
Do you really think a hand me down Constitution a la Japan would have worked in Iraq?
I think the Liberal Media would have had something to say about that!
As for Habeas Corpus, it is very simple. Everyone deserves their day in court. Be you a natural born citizen or a forigner.
Holding people for five years without charge is just not on. Not for the held or those in whose name they are being held.
There are some very nasty people out there who wish to do us harm, and do not play by the rules.
But to have any sense of the moral high ground we must, or it erodes the very ground we perport to stand on.
It really is no good to say we can suspend the rule of law for now and come back to it later, when a crisis has subsided, because it never seems to come back to the same place now does it?
Is that what you’re saying?
It’s on YouTube. Try this link – http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ufqr9-i-zI4
You are describing parliamentary democracy. But at some time it votes on lunch. Perhaps sheep and wolves are the wrong players. Perhaps all become jackels when the biggest mob wins. We have right now, in both of our countries, parents financially devouring their own children through entitlement programs and proliferate deficit spending. This is the degree of evil that democratic redistribution can entice people into.
Do I think a hand me down constitution could have worked in Iraq? I think it’s the only thing that stood a chance.
I wish more people shared your and my stand on principle. The fashion now seems to be to point at a piece of absolute slime and say “he’s doing it, I’m justified in doing it back.” They never seem to understand that it is much quicker to jump into a cesspit than it is to climb back out again.
In actual respect to the witches case, if an executive refuses the authority of the constitution, all the executive needs to do to remain in power is take popular actions.
Which is how it works in Britain, where the executive does have absolute power, very nearly, as long as it is never too unpopular at the time of a general election. Equivalent to no constitution at all.
A constitutionally bound state of course creates difficulties with legalistic tyranny, which I diagnose as America’s peculiar problem: the spirit evaded by active use of the letter, purporting to create a way around constitutional bars by slippery definition. That’s what’s happened in the case we are discussing, and can also be seen very clearly in the current administration’s approach to torture.
Yes, that is what he is saying. And he is spectacularly wrong.
Exactly. The framers presumed common law and residual liberty. Without them the constitution doesn’t make sense – at least not to this now unprotected (but, it seems, subject) foreigner. Gonzales is attempting the definition trick on quite a grand scale, wholly inverting the Constitution of the US by (re)defining its terms as a complete grant to individuals from the collective. Its roots in Blackstone and Coke are inconvenient, so ignored.
Guy,
On February 9th of 1788, on a group blog called The Federalist Papers (archived here), a political blogger believed to be James Madison used the pseudonym “Publius” to put up some posts discussing the proposed House of Representatives.
In number 53 he makes some comparisons of political philosophy in America and in Britain. I’ve selected some of his observations for a future post and perhaps it is time to put it up.
‘Pa. You’re missing the point. The issue is not the question that was asked, ie enemy combatants. It is the answer that was given. “Every individual in the United States”, “every citizen”
‘Habeas corpus is access to the judicial process. What more need be said? Of course “Habeas is entirely useless at protecting you from the law”. Habeas is your protection BY the law.”‘
I’m still missing the point. What is wrong with the answer that the GA gave? He is not saying that every individual in the US does not have the right, he is saying that it isn’t the Constitution that gives it to them. Are you saying that it does?
Habeas corpus is a technical term for a particular writ examining the legality of detention. Popular usage is to equate this to judicial process, but it is only one particular example of a judicial process, and not a very useful one if it is the law that has been written against you and not just some lawman breaking the rules. In theory, you can have a right to trial without habeas, and you can have habeas without right to a trial. Of course, if the terrorists’ lawyers can get a writ of habeas into a US court, they may well be able to lever that into much more – presumably that is a big part of the reason the GA’s so dead set against granting it. My point is that while habeas is not itself granted by the constitution (as far as I can see), the right to due process is. By keeping on calling it habeas (presumably for the PR value of “violating ancient rights”) they fall into the GA’s trap. He can truthfully say habeas is not a Constitutional right, and avoid any awkward questions about due process, which is. He’s indulging in a legal pedanticism in order to fog the issue.
As far as I can tell…, unless someone can show me otherwise?
!#@)(*&%&^! [speaking softly to self] “Calm down Mid. He’s English. Constitutionally restrained government is unfamiliar territory for him. Their constitution is what ever parliament says it is. James Madison understood that well.”
Pa, Guy put it very well when he said:
You said “He [the attorney general] can truthfully say habeas is not a Constitutional right,”
No. He positively cannot. The constitution does not grant rights. It prevents the government from taking them. Since that is a right with prohibitive constitutional restrictions on its taking, it is a constitutional right.
Declaration of Independence:
9th amendment:
10th amendment:
The Declaration is very clear. Liberty is an “unalienable Right”.
9th says rights exist above and prior to the constitution. They may only be taken under constitutional terms.
10th says government does not have any powers not expressly granted
Laws must pass a constitutionality test to stand.
Liberty may not be taken except as authorized in the constitution.
Habeas corpus is a prohibition on government officials acting outside of the constitution and the laws which derive from it.
Without habeas corpus, the constitution is just a theory, meaningless and completely unenforceable.
You said “The constitution does not grant rights.” I disagree, but suppose it is true. So what does? Where does it say who has the right of habeas for the Constitution to prevent it being taken away from? And does that source, whatever it is, grant it to Saudis imprisoned in Cuba for crimes against international (not US) law committed in Afghanistan? There is a difference between having a right taken away and never having had the right in the first place.
“Since that is a right with prohibitive constitutional restrictions on its taking, it is a constitutional right.”
OK, I accept the terminology. Now, is it a constitutional right that everyone has, and if so, where does it say that?
You say the framers assumed common law and residual liberty. OK, that’s a possible source. But does common law extend beyond the bounds of sovereignty? Our English common law doesn’t, perhaps yours is different? (And if it isn’t explicitly written down anywhere, how does that affect your comment about us English suffering for our lack of a written constitution…)
You quote the bit about all men being created equal and having an inalienable right to liberty. As I said above, that would seem to apply to everyone in the world. If that’s the answer, then I’m happy with that, but it surprises me.
But that’s irrelevant to habeas since habeas isn’t the same thing as liberty. It’s origin is the right to petition the Monarch, and it does not offer liberty, only that any detention must be sanctioned by law. It is a part of the guarantee, but the less essential part. The other is the right to due process, a right that is granted by the Constitution (hence my disagreement above), but again a right where it isn’t clear exactly in what circumstances it is granted.
I should say before you get too steamed up that I’m certainly in favour of both the right of habeas and of due process being granted to everybody, although I have questions about the balance of evidence to be required in certain extreme cases. What I’m talking about is not whether people should have such rights, but whether in fact they do, in the sense of having had them granted. And whether it is at all possible that the Attorney General does actually know what the law is, better than the average man in the street. (No offence intended, mind.)
I think we’re possibly both misunderstanding what the other is trying to say. If the conversation isn’t interesting to you, or is proving too frustrating, feel free to drop it. I can find the information elsewhere, I expect. I was only asking because I respect your knowledge as almost certain to be being far more detailed than mine, and asking someone who knows is easier than doing one’s own research! 🙂
I think an honest reading of the constitution is that anyone imprisoned by the government that the constitution created is entitled to a writ of habeas corpus.
Also, in regard to common law, remember most law was the purview of the states. The federal constitution was intended to interconnect them, not rule them. It was assumed that states would continue their preexisting jurisdiction. Hense the big deal about the 9th and 10th amendments. Read that 10th amendment carefully.
You said:
Ain’t this beautiful?
You said:
“… habeas … does not offer liberty, only that any detention must be sanctioned by law. It is a part of the guarantee, but the less essential part.”
I think the problem here is that you live in the UK. Your laws are whatever whims strike whoever is currently infestating Whitehall. This is why you blow off the protection of law as such a triviality. Our law is our constitution. It is our protector, not our jailer.
What you need to understand for us to communicate is the meta-context 🙂 of our constitution. It is not a declaration of rights that the government may not infringe, it is a declaration of the rights the government may infringe. Here’s that 10th amendment again. It’s a biggy.
And the 9th. It’s even bigger.
Pa,
I had some time to read JOHNSON v. EISENTRAGER, 339 U.S. 763 (1950) a little more carefully. It is clear they uphold that anything on sovereign territory is unquestionably covered by habeas corpus.
The question becomes interesting when we look at sovereignty. Clearly in any case where it was necessary to negotiate a SOFA it can be stated that those terms cover and we have no territorial jurisdiction. But by any reading that makes sense to me, where we control and do not recognize any partner in that control, we have sovereignty. Any claim that Guantanamo is non-sovereign is pure sophistry. It is a valid and legal lease that can only be terminated by US abandonment or mutual agreement. The same terms of possession could be used to describe any national territory.
And even if that wasn’t the case, any where the US has consolidated enough control to exercise authoritative control and hold trials can be said to be sovereign territory. Any actions there are subject to the civil courts via the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces mentioned earlier.
I don’t know if you happened to read this, but it is interesting and relevent to some of your questions. It is taken from JOHNSON v. EISENTRAGER.
Majority opinion statements:
and
That Yamashita ruling is interesting because the reason he was granted habeas corpus is because the courts of the jurisdiction in which he was held (Philippines) were (by statute?) subject to review by the Supreme Court. That same chain of provenance can be applied to the military legal system via the military Court of Appeals.
And dissenting opinions concurrently expressed by Justices Black, Douglas and Burton:
Reading the case and the dissent, it seems to me that the dissenting opinions are on much stronger ground constitutionally. The majority appeared to be determined to, in Guy’s apt phrasing “create a way around constitutional bars by slippery definition.”
But really, does any of this matter when we have it on the good authority of the Attorney General of the United States that there is no right of habeas corpus for anyone? Even residents and citizens?
Thanks for that. It was most interesting.
Such an open ended law, granting all rights not specifically denied, is truly remarkable. Like the right to goose the President’s cat on Shrove Tuesday. It’s not explicitly denied, and is therefore a Constitutional right. Or is that not what you meant? 😉
On your last point
“But really, does any of this matter when we have it on the good authority of the Attorney General of the United States that there is no right of habeas corpus for anyone? Even residents and citizens?”
That wasn’t what he said. I’m sure he agrees that residents and citizens do have the right of habeas corpus, he is only making the technical legal point that nowhere in the Constitution does it explicitly say that. It is possible, as you say, that by convention it should be interpreted to mean that, but lawyers argue interpretations and precedents endlessly.
He hasn’t taken away the right of habeas, certainly not from residents and citizens like yourself, and nor is he saying he could take it away. What he said may well be very significant Constitutionally, but it’s a more subtle position than simply ‘denying habeas to everyone’.
This argument isn’t getting anywhere, so this is my last post on the subject. But it has certainly been educational for me. Thanks.
Well, I imagine that depends alot on where the President’s cat is.
The logic of your statement (and his) is that the constitution stipulates when the government may not take away the right to habeas, but allows it unrestricted power to unilaterally decide whether or not it first existed. As a mathematician, Pa, you should see the illogic of that interpretation.
Basically what the AG said Pa, was semantic wriggling
to support an untenable position that the US Govt has got itself into.
“but allows it unrestricted power to unilaterally decide whether or not it first existed”
Ummm. No.
It says nothing about who decides what the limits are. Something, common law or maybe some other document, has ascribed certain rights. The Constitution prevents the rights this other source assigns being taken away (and adds other rights too). If that source was government fiat, then what you say could be true, but I don’t think it is. I think there is precedent and documentation (English successors to Magna Carta for example) that set the limits of what does and does not apply. The government cannot overturn that. What they can do is cite it and maybe even re-interpret it for today’s modern world to say to who rights do and do not apply. You have to fight them on the ground on which they stand, not the ground you think they’re standing on.
The AG was asked about the constitutional implications, and he said the constitution didn’t say. He didn’t say that nothing else did.
And he only answered on habeas, he didn’t mention the right to due process, which is a separate right, is guaranteed by the constitution (albeit with complications), and is the main issue in this case. Deceptive, yes. Revoking habeas corpus, no.
Really, the last comment.
Up there at 11:13PM on the 24th I quoted the opening salvo of the Declaration of Independence, our first official document independant of British rule.
Here it is. How much wiggle room do you see?
Now Pa, whoever or whatever you believe the “Creator” is, God, evolution, or cosmic conincidence, it is clear that “all men” were granted the same rights by that creator. It is the philosophy of the founders of this nation, and the foundation stone of the government they created, that these rights are pre-established by an unchallangeable authority and apply equally to all.
To the founders, the attorney general’s refusal to accept this statement of equality and freedom would have been on a par with claiming the divine right of kings. Which, in a democratic/collectivist sort of way, he is.
No. Due process of law is secondary to due access to law, ie habeas corpus. Process cannot exist without access. You have the order wrong.
I think you say things that probably many people think. That is why I like your comments. They provide an excellent, well stated and defended opportunity to challange popular assumptions. That meta-context thing again. Your arguments also cause me to shake out and dump some of my own assumptions along the way. Don’t stop commenting until you burn out. And if I get too intense, just tell me to lighten up. I tend to get tunnel vision when discussing principles. (Ya think?)