Summary: What’s At Stake With HR 6166 and S 3930
Brace yourself, America. You could lose your liberty today. The Senate is poised to vote on S 3930, its version of HR 6166, the legislation passed by the House of Representatives yesterday.
You need to know what this new law will do if the Senate votes to approve it. It will:
|-> revoke habeas corpus
|-> create a secret committee appointed by Bush and Rumsfeld that has the power to declare any person - even a US citizen - to be an enemy, instantly depriving them of their legal rights. There will be no appeal allowed.
|-> allow police to search through your home without a search warrant
|-> end protection of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions
|-> give George W. Bush amnesty for any war crimes he has committed
|-> allow for people to be put on trial in front of a kangaroo court military tribunal, even if they aren’t in any military, and have not engaged in military attacks against the USA
|-> allow the government to convict people of crimes on the basis of secret evidence that the accused never sees
|-> make it legal for the government to use testimony extracted through torture
|-> end the legal right to be protected from forced self-incrimination
|-> allow the government to imprison people without telling them what crimes they are being charged with
|-> remove the right to cross-examine witnesses
|-> allow for the records of trials to be kept secret from the American public
|-> enable trials to begin even before a thorough investigation of the alleged crime has taken place
|-> take away the right to a speedy trial, allowing people to fester behind bars without being charged of any crime
That’s pretty much what I get out of the bill and various online discussions, jclifford, but it’s a long bill, and I haven’t read the whole thing. No one has had time to study it. They’re in a big hurry to rush it through with no debate.
They will try to vote on it this morning.
To contact your senators, find out both of your senators’ names at http://www.senate.gov/ then call the capitol switchboard:
202 224-3121
ask for your senator
ask how your senator is voting on detainee torture S.3930
Dick Durbin’s office tells me they just found out Durbin will vote against the bill.
Barack Obama’s office tells me they are not saying officially how the senator will vote, but he is on record as supporting the Geneva conventions. They did ask for my zip code, so that tells me they are keeping a record of calls on this issue. There is some buzz on the blogosphere about Obama’s public statements on the passage of the house resolution. If you are from Illinois, do call Obama’s office.
When you vote, you are one voice out of thousands, and your influence is a small fraction. When you call your senator’s office about an issue you can personally sway that issue.
If you don’t subscribe to a long distance service, this is the one I used, 53 cents to connnect and 3 cents a minute. Dial 10-10-987+1+number for U.S. calls. You can call both senators for less than the price of two candy bars.
This is extremely scary to me coming from a young American citizen. How could anyone even think of passing some of those laws? I hope the senate is smart.
More than anything else, this looks like a deliberate distraction technique to me. While everyone is busy fighting this, what kind of other slick shit are they going to secretly append to some budget bill?
Kayla and Hiroe,
The fighting, over this bill at least, is done. It’s passed, and only the Bush-stacked courts can overturn it. Sad but true.
Yet, we must protest this bill. We cannot allow this attack on our liberty to stand. We cannot be silent, and allow the people in our government who supported this to do so without consequences. We must not relent in our voice against this new unjust law.
If we become silent on this matter, the law will never be undone, and those who voted for it will remain in office.
Did you know, that the constitution > laws, anything in this that is unconstitutional is ignored, they have passed bills like this before. Also george w bush is awesome. booya
Alex, it is only ignored if the Supreme Court declares it should be, and George W. Bush, booya-able or not, has stacked the Court with people who think like him.
Apparently the best thing anyone has to say about this bill is don’t worry, it’s unconstitutional so I’m sure the courts will ignore it. Suddenly all this confidence that activist judges will defy the will of lawmakers and the executive? Spare me.
We’ve got three branches in this government because the founders wanted three checks on tyrrany. Two of those checks have already failed, and they’ve been hammering “activist judges” rhetoric and stacking the courts toward breaking the last one.
Booya.
does any1 have a link to the actual bill? not the summary?
here ya go dennis(ironically found by google..) http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_bills&docid=f:s3930is.txt.pdf
Did the house of representatives pass it?
It’s in the first paragraph, Carlo. The house of representatives passed it 9/27; the senate passed the exact same bill on 9/28. The president was supposed to sign the bill yesterday, but I have not heard he has done this. There is no ’statement on signing’ on his website, as of this morning.
Lest we forget that we, the people, chose our representatives, who are passing our legislation. Maybe if we weren’t so scared, we’d actually take the time to think about what is going on in America.
And what DO you think is going on in America, Jack?
Has everyone actually read the bill or just the summary put out by biased papers and bloggers.
to be truly informed to need to read the whole thing. I still havent’ decided, it is scary if the bill does what others say it will do.
When will we rise?
When we add the yeast, knead, and leave in a warm place.