Letters to the Editor
GlennGreenwald
Published Letters: 2221 Editor's Choice: 18
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Steve LG
[Read the article: Your modern-day Republican Party]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Speaking for myself, I share the Stevens/Scalia/Greenwald position that the full judicial review of these determinations is the appropriate level if Due Process. I wasn't trying to justify a more restrictive position.
Fair enough. My hostility wasn't directed towards you but towards McCarthy (even though, admittedly, that might not have been obvious in what I wrote). He's basically the pundit version of Giuliani -- a former federal prosecutor who believes in endless federal power in order to capture and punish those whom they, in their infinite unerring Goodness and with no need for scrutiny or checks, deem to be "Bad."
Yes, McCarthy's summary is, more or less (though not completely), an accurate description of the state of the law in light of Hamdi. But that has nothing to do with Romney and Giuliani's answers, and McCarthy is offering in order to defend - as he always does, day after day -- every Republican assertion of authortarian power. It's his modus operandi.
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LBS:
[Read the article: Your modern-day Republican Party]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Giuliani can win with that very statement
As Rosenberg stated the other day, the nation is already selectively authoritarian. Certainly, as Reality Kid noted, most Americans blithely accept, and indeed laud, the imprisonment of vast numbers of African Americans.
So, sadly, Giuliani's statement could win him the election.
The tactic that you say will work was the one the Republicans just tried in November, 2006. They engineered a vote on the Military Commissions Act and habeas corpus (as applied to non-citizens, not citizens), and Republicans voted in favor and Democrats overwhelmingly opposed it. Republicans then made it one of their central campaign issues by claiming that Democrats were soft on terrorism, in favor of giving rights to terrorists, etc.
How did that work for them? What evidence are you finding that Giuliani can win an election based on favoring the power of the President to imprison Americans without charges?
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David W
[Read the article: Your modern-day Republican Party]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's good to see that so many people are outraged at the thought of imprisoning American citizens without charge or review. But I wish Americans were as outraged at such imprisonment of non-Americans.
The issue isn't whether America is "imprisoning" people. Many people, including some at Guantanamo, deserve to be imprisoned. The issue is whether they are being imprisoned with or without fair process - and who says Americans aren't outraged at the process-less imprisonment of non-Americans?
This has actually happened and is not just a glint in a Republican's eye.
Americans have actually been imprisoned without any process as well. It's not "just a glint in a Republican eye."
It's understandable that Americans are primarily concerned with what's happening in their own country, and rightly protest at infringements to their liberties, but, believe me, it doesn't look good from outside to see that there's one rule for Americans and another for non-Americans.
Most countries in the world, if not all, have different sets rights and responsibilities for their own citizens as opposed to non-citizens. America isn't unique in that regard.
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Sigyn - - U.S. citizens v. non-citizens
[Read the article: Your modern-day Republican Party]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]See, I was always taught that the Bill of Rights applied to non-citizens as well.
I wasn't speaking about specific constitutional rights or even the Bill of Rights -- just rights and responsibilities generally. Citizens are entitled to vote, enter the county, remain in the country, and are required to pay taxes on their income. None of that is true for non-citizens. And that's true not just in the U.S., but in many countries, if not most.
There are rights and responsibilities that citizens have that non-citizens don't have, and - as a general proposition - that's not unique to the U.S. As but one illustrative example, in most countries around the world, you can be deported with very little to no process, whereas citizens of those countries obviously cannot be. Governments have obligations to their citizens that they may not have to non-citizens.
Once you start analyzing specific rights -- such as habeas corpus rights in the U.S. -- it's really an oversimplication to say that they all apply equally to everyone. Whether they should> or not is a separate question from whether they do, and there are several areas in the law where the rights of citizens and non-citizens have been treated analytically different by the courts (along with other factors such as whether they are in the U.S. or outside, whether they were in the U.S. illegally or legally, etc.).
As a clear legal matter, there just is a difference between the U.S. government imprisoning its own citizens and, for instance, imprisoning non-citizens it captures on a foreign battlefield (for one, the Constitution applies to the former and the Geneva Conventions apply to the latter). And that different treatment is not some unique American doctrine.
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Citizens v. non-citizens.
[Read the article: Your modern-day Republican Party]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Non citizens living and working in the USA pay all US taxes a citizen pays.
Citizens who live and work in the U.S. legally pay taxes; citizens who live and work in the U.S. illegally do not.
Also, non-citizens who don't live in the US don't pay taxes. By contrast, U.S. citizens who don't live or work in the U.S. still pay taxes on their income to the U.S. government.
Every country's laws treat citizens and non-citizens differently in some ways. That's the only reason to bother identifying anyone as a "citizen" or not.
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Value of forced corrections
[Read the article: Will National Review correct Cliff May's false Iraq claims?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But we still ought to try and call them on it as much as possible.
That they deny reality is not news, as you point out. But I just think that if you force them in super-clear cases to acknowledge their factual error - just by appealing to the basic journalistic standards to which they claim fidelity - it can go a long way to precluding its use and forcing them to resort to others ("even National Review was forced to admit that most Americans actually favor a withdrawal from Iraq, and are not merely frustrated with the 'lack of progress' in the war").