US Senate Fails To Reinstate Habeas Corpus

Khyber notes that yesterday a vote in the US Senate fell four votes short of what was needed to restore habeas corpus — the fundamental right of individauls to challenge government detention. Here is the record of the vote on the Cloture Motion to restore Habeas Corpus. Article 4 of the US Constitution states that habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless in cases of rebellion and invasion when the public safety may require it.

Comments

This is being reported incorrectly

[kithrup]

This was not a failed vote to reinstate habeas corpus; this was a failed vote to end a threatened filibuster by Republican Senators.

After years of crying that Democrats threatened filibuster, and the media reporting it as such, we have come to a time where the Republicans have turned almost every debate leading to a vote into a threatened filibuster... and the media are not reporting it as such. Instead, they swallow the GOP line that there needed to be 60 votes for it.

Stupid, lazy, cowardly reporters.

Re:Habeas Corpus not "revoked"

[Dr. Manhattan]

The rights written in the Bill of Rights apply to all humans

It's also worth pointing out that those rights aren't there to protect the guilty, they are there to protect the innocent. And there's good reason to believe that there are innocent people detained in these camps:

• The vast majority were turned in by people looking for reward money or to suck up to U.S. forces. Witch hunt, anyone?
• We know that innocent people have been detained and then killed by U.S. forces. If you're not familiar with the case of Dilawar the taxi driver, you need to read this. This guy was captured by an Iraqi warlord trying to deflect suspicion from himself for an attack on U.S. troops. Then, because they thought he screamed funny, a bunch of United States soldiers "pulped" (the words of the doctor who performed the autopsy) his legs. The other four guys were shipped to Gitmo and held for a year or so before they finally decided they posed no threat.
• The soldiers there "know" these are bad guys, and treat them that way, regardless of who they are. You ask how I know that? So, a U.S. soldier at Guantanamo is asked to impersonate an unruly detainee for a drill. Unfortunately, the soldiers sent in to subdue him aren't told it's a drill. He ends up with brain damage and seizures.

Detaining 'enemy combatants' makes sense, to an extent. But they are still entitled to a tribunal under the Geneva Convention to determine if they actually are 'enemy combatants'. Go ahead, read Convention III, Article 5 for yourself. Signatories (like the U.S.) are supposed to extend protection preemptively, until and unless a tribunal has determined that the Geneva protections don't apply.

Sure, the U.S. is better than a Soviet gulag or Saddam Hussein's torture rooms. So what? That's not much to brag about. We ought to be an example to the world of the rule of law, like when we advocated and won trial against the Nazis in WWII. The Soviets and the British were all for summary executions... how far we've fallen.

Re:Habeas Corpus not "revoked"

[Dr. Manhattan]

And exactly under which Army or Country do these militants fall so as to be extended Genevea Convention rights again?

Exactly how were any of them actually determined to be 'militants' again?

That's the entire damn point. That taxi driver was killed because a real militant turned him in for reward money and to curry favor with U.S. troops, and those U.S. troops assumed - just like you - that if he was in custody, he must therefore be guilty.

The whole point of citing that section of the Geneva Convention is to illustrate that people like you are flat wrong. It specifically says that you have to extend protections first, and then, if a competent tribunal determines that they don't apply, you can stop. That's to prevent things like taxi drivers getting beaten to death for no reason.

Let's assume that 99.9% of these detainees are scum of the Earth. (They're not, and if you read any of the links I pointed to, you'd know that. But just for the sake of the argument...) They are detained. They are not going to be shooting at anyone or blowing anyone up. We do have the time to examine them and make sure we actually have a 'person of interest' before we start with the clubbings, just to make sure we don't kill some poor guy who was turned in for the reward money.

Oh, wait. Unless your goal really is to just terrify the populace. In which case I take it back, how are we better than Saddam Hussein again?

US constitution, article III, section 2

[Scrameustache]

Right at the beginning...

"We the people of the United States of America"
[...] just because it doesn't SAY "citizen" or "resident" or whatever doesn't mean it covers the world's population. Wrong.

And whenever a right is not granted to a person who is not a citizen of the united states, those conditions are explicitly enumerated:

Article I: No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen.

Article II: No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.

And more importantly, article III says:
Section 2. The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and citizens of another state;--between citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.articleiii.html

Re:Habeas Corpus not "revoked"

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

My understanding is that many of the people were not 'captured on the battlefield' but in fact were turned in for a reward. How does that impact your conclusion? According to This American Life episode 331: Habeas Schmabeas only about 6 percent of those in Guantanamo were "captured on the battlefield."

That episode won a Peabody Award by the way - the same award that The Daily Show won for its election coverage. It is well worth a listen, especially for those who have faith that their government is doing the right thing in Guantanamo.

Like the story of one pair of brothers who were editors of a newspaper in Pakistan and were picked up because they published a political cartoon - one that offered a reward of about $25 for the capture of Bill Clinton after he ordered an attack on that aspirin factory in Africa. One of the brothers was released after 3 years, the other is apparently still in lockup.