Bush signs new 'terrorist' law

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aNT4DYcnoja8&refer=home

Maybe I missed it but there seems to be no one talking about this issue here.
I'm not from the US but it seems to me that by giving your president these rights you have opened the door to a totalitarian government that will be hard to stop, when they set their minds to it.
Almost exactly this type of law was accepted by the German parliament in the 1940's, with almost exactly the same reason, although then it were communists and (jewish) bolshevists. It never occurred to the germans that they themselves could at one time be the target of this law, namely as soon as they wanted to get rid of Hitler again. It was their own fault and they payed the price.

Ursa..

 

Looks that way. Congress made the law. Bush signed it. And yesterday morning the last branch of US government started the process of turning its back.

"Within hours, Justice Department lawyers notified the federal courts that they no longer had the authority to hear pending lawsuits filed by attorneys on behalf of inmates of the penal camp at Guantánamo Bay. They cited passages in the bill that suspend the fundamental principle of habeas corpus, making Mr. Bush the first president since the Civil War to take that undemocratic step."

-NYT today

I have no idea now what the mechanism would be for judicial inquiry into the fate of the "disappeared".

That's really all those lost souls had left with a runaway Congress and President.

 

Yes, I agree. I think the event will in hindsight be as historical as the equivalent one when the nazi's got it through at the time.
This week the US joined the other side. So, what's there to defend?

Get out while you can,

Ursa..

PS. First time I'm glad you citizens are still allowed to own weapons (wasn't this precisely the event foreseen to allow you that?)

 

There is a myth going around that these detainees will have no rights. #1 this law applies to "enemy combatants". There is a military hearing. If you are found to be an enemy combatant, you can appeal to the DC District Federal Appeals Court. If they uphold the military court, you can appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Why should enemy combatants have thye same rights as a US Citizen?

 

They don't need to have the same rights in all levels, but this is about basic human rights. Those rights determine the difference between a civilized, enlightened nation, and one that gives judicial power to the powers that be. A barbaric one.

The question is: who determines if someone is an enemy combatant? And if a mistake is made, as is common, who would ever hear about it?
Just for saying stuff like this I could be determined to be an enemy combatant and picked up. Many have 'legally' disappeared that way. Until now that was in countries like Iraq or Argentine, or China. Now this is globalization too?

Ursa..

 

Why don't you worry about your own turf.

Caving to Terrorism
Dutch member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been ordered by a court to vacate her apartment because her criticisms of terrorism and violence against women in Dutch Muslim communities triggered a hostile reaction from Islamic extremists. The hostile reaction made some neighboring apartment owners feel unsafe, even though the Dutch government provides extensive building security. The court relied upon the European Convention on Human Rights, a politically correct hodgepodge of freshly-minted “rights” that left-wing European courts have frequently invoked to justify restrictions on individual freedom. It sided with neighboring apartment-dwellers who sued claiming Ali’s presence put their “right” to feel safe at risk.

Hirsi Ali, a woman of Somalian Muslim origin, went into hiding in November 2004 when filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered by an Islamic extremist. They had finished work shortly before his murder on Submission, a short film about the ill-treatment of women under Islam.

On April 28, a Dutch appeals court ruled that Hirsi Ali could be kicked out of her home because her presence meant neighbors no longer felt safe in their own apartments or in the communal areas of the apartment complex. The court held the Dutch government violated Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which mandates respect for a person's private and family life, by moving Ali to the apartment complex without seeking their consent and without taking measures to diminish the neighbors' valid fears.

This is the ultimate in blaming the victim, and it is no accident that it occurred in “sophisticated” Europe, which smug academics and lawyers claim is more advanced than America when it comes to human rights.

The Dutch courts’ action would be unthinkable under American law, at least at the current time. In America, speakers cannot be restricted by the government in response to angry listeners or the fears of third parties. Under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, citizens cannot be denied the right to speak publicly because of an angry reaction by listeners, nor can they even be charged expensive fees for peaceful picketing because of the increased cost to police of protecting them from those who might commit violence against them. In unfashionable America, a heckler’s veto is not permitted to silence speech

But the European Court of Human Rights has frequently allowed restrictions on free speech that would be unthinkable in America, such as restricting criticisms of governmental misconduct, despite the fact that the European Convention purports to protect free speech rights.

Some have minimized the importance of the Dutch courts’ terrible ruling by saying that its holding that Ali can be kicked out of her home is limited to cases in which the government has gotten involved in housing a controversial speaker.

That may be wishful thinking. In American law, you can only sue the government for acts by the government itself, not third parties. For example, you cannot bring a federal constitutional lawsuit alleging that the local police department failed to protect you from your estranged lover, since your estranged lover is not a state actor (many such lawsuits have been brought, but plaintiffs invariably lose such cases, with a few rare exceptions, such as an unusual case that is frequently shown as a movie on the Lifetime Channel).

Under the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, by contrast, you can sue in such cases, because in its eyes, “rights” apply not just against the government’s own actions, but also against a government’s failure to prevent private conduct. America’s “state action” doctrine, which limits the constitution’s reach to acts by the government, is considered very passé.

(When Joseph H.H. Weiler, who was a co-drafter of the European Parliament's Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms, taught at Harvard, he disdained American legal scholars who believed in free markets and individual freedom, like Richard Epstein. Instead, he brought to Europe to lecture on human rights two radical law professors opposed to the state-action doctrine, whom he hailed as “powerful cocktails”: Duncan Kennedy, who was widely ridiculed at Harvard for advocating rotating his law school’s faculty and janitors into each other’s positions and paying them all equally, and feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, a vociferous defender of campus speech codes, who has argued that most heterosexual sex is rape, even if the female participant claims she consented to it).

So in a future case, someone like Ali may not be able to live anywhere near anyone else, thanks to European “human rights” law. Even if the government plays no role in providing a controversial speaker like Ali with a place to live, there may still be a lawsuit if the government fails to deliberately isolate such a speaker from any nervous neighbors who feel unsafe.

A final irony is that while Ali lives under heavy security in large part because she criticized the terrible treatment of women in the Netherlands’ Muslim ghettos, Dutch feminists have by and large been deafeningly silent about her plight and the violence against women in those ghettos.

Often, we are told we should defer to international norms, although the international community has done nothing to prevent genocide in Darfur and Rwanda, and only American unilateral intervention stopped the killing of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo and the Kurds in Iraq.

Left-wing legal scholars claim that European “human rights” decisions should be treated as customary international law, entitled to binding force in American courts under the Alien Tort Claims Act.

The Dutch appeals court’s decision offers a cautionary reminder of why we should not defer to foreign law, and instead preserve what is unique and valuable about our Constitution.

 

So its "common" for mistakes to be made? PLEASE cite the source for that line of BS. Do you really think that all those people in Gitmo are innocent? 90% were captured in war zones. I think that just might meet the definition of "enemy combatant".

 

Captured in a war zone means they are necessarily enemy combatants?

You aren't really that stupid, are you?

Oh, well, maybe you are....

Here is the deal for you mentally challenged types. We have this concept of innocent until proven guilty....and guilt by associate is not sufficient to hold these people.

Hey, all we are asking for is some evidence of guilt, then a fair trial, not just Bush's word, can you even grasp that simple concept?

We only stand to gain by showing the world that we practice what we preach...

We stand to lose when we preach democracy and justice, then ignore it when it suits men like Mr. bush...

 

Yes, you're right and it was an outrage what happened there. Compliments for your research btw.

Still, I think this is of very different proportions than the latest ruling by Mr. Bush. In the Dutch case it concerned a civil procedure by the neighbors that was acknowledged for some strange reason by a local judge. The US ruling concerns neigh constitutional values, bordering to human rights.

I'm not so much worried about the detainees, although it would be prove of a really great nation to give them their right too, why not? I'm worried for the greatest treasure in the world, the US constitution. It is hollowed out from the inside and will soon lose it's fundaments.
I wouldn't be meddling in your affairs if I didn't think it was that important.
I think the US population does not realize yet what grave danger they allowed to emerge. It is truly similar to the nazi period; create empowering laws. What the nazi's were also very good at was creating the right atmosphere for such hard measures; they had their means of creating unrest and common enemies. They burned the Reichstag just before major elections were held. I wasn't that paranoid a few years ago, but who knows what the real purpose of these frequently heightened alert-levels is?
I'm now not allowed to have a bottle of water with me in the plane?? Oh,, come on.

Ursa..

 

I have read that the reason Bush needed some kind of law like this is because remember that American who they picked up at an airport like 4 years ago and kept him in solitary confinement?..Rumsfeld make a big announcement while in Russia that this American was going to set off a dirty bomb..Joey Padilla or the spelling I might have wrong..labeled him a "enemy combatant"

What I read is the reason they even heard about this Joe guy in the first place is because they were given his name by a guy they were torturing in one of those secret places overseas..the guy was getting tortured so bad, that he started giving these names out so they would stop and this Joey guy was one of the names...

So if information obtained from so called harsh (torture) ways was not admissible, then this dirty bomb guy would probably be let free...at least that is how I read about it...I will try and find the link to the story where I read it but I don't believe I bookmarked it.