When I took U.S. Constitutional Law at college, we were taught that long-established Constitutional principles of U.S. jurisprudence hold that: an offense committed PRIOR to the ratification of a new law legalizing the heretofore illegal behavior neither excuses nor grants legal protection to the offender. If it was against the law WHEN YOU DID IT, then you're guilty. If you did it AFTER the new law legalizing said behavior was passed, then you're not guilty. Simple, right?

Why is no one challenging this nonsense about Congress arrogating to itself the power (which is NOT granted by the Constitution) to legalize crimes committed in the past?

This is easily as great a danger to U.S. Constitutional law as the insanely stupid notion that a sitting President has the authority to suspend habeas corpus. He doesn't!

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in "ex parte Milligan" (look it up) that NO ONE, not even in time of war, has the authority to suspend habeas corpus. President Lincoln had repeatedly suspended habeas corpus during the course of our Civil War, which practice was ruled unconstitutional and illegal in ex parte Milligan. That put a stop to that, until a hundred and fifty years later this boarding-school bully masquerading as a cowboy came along with his legbreaker Alberto "Uncle Juan" Gonzales.

And by the way, next time you hear a member of the Bush Administration blather about "the constitutional principle of the Unitary Executive", look it up: the IS NO SUCH PRINCIPLE OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW in the United States. It's total doublespeak, an attempt to cash in on general ignorance of Constitutional Law, an act of intellectual fraud perpetrated by Att'y Gen. Gonzales, et al..

just a hint, any time you start comparing someone to the nazis, you have lost all credibility.

I cannot figure out what Bush and Cheney are shooting for. They continually amaze us with their breathtaking barbarism... BUT! We do not believe, so far, that they are evil enough, or even competent enough, to have faked 9-11.

SO... Please, rational legal experts, post here, and tell us how to fight this torture and dungeons bill.

In February of 1933 the German Reichstag (the Parliament Building) was set on fire by "Terrorists" and produced the same kind of hysteria that 9/11 has produced in this country. Following the events of February 1933, Adolf Hitler pushed through parliament the ’Reichstag Fire Decree’ (read: 'Patriot act'), which rescinded habeas corpus and civil liberties. The rest is history. I am shocked that this country is heading down the same path. I love this country and its values but am ashamed to be associated with the current administration's world view and lack of understanding. Thanks to Mr. Ratner for standing up for basic human rights.

The current bid by the hired killers in the bush administration to dump the rule of law and establish a theocratic apocalyptic monarchy will allow them to define anyone as a terrorist, especially the millions of 911 truth activists that are closing in on them. Bush has begun to talk of bombs in the WTC in an attempt to co-opt the 911 truth movement and diffuse the key point of evidence--controlled demolition. A few weeks ago a reporter on CNN said that 911 truth activists in the united states are linked with a faction of islamic terrorists. this was again mouthed by someone close to bush (i can't remember who). a blatantly desperate attempt to justify rounding up activists, dissidents, quakers, aclu members, etc. These people are the most evil, sick and dangerous people on the planet and virtually anyone who is not "with them" is in their perverse minds-- "against them" beware, be very aware.

It appears that this bill still is changing. And Senator McCain's position is not clear at all. So, we need to see how the situation shakes out. If the bill gets a vote and passes, it clearly is unconstitutional.

So what is the next step? How quickly can we mount a legal challenge? Do we need to wait until somebody is victimized by the bill? Must we take this through the entire court system? Can we get a "stay?"

I most strongly support Mr. Ratner’s efforts. I agree with his assessment of the hugely and lethally serious nature of the threat this Administration poses to Constitutional government and the rule of law. But we underestimate the threat and the challenge if we conveniently and self-servingly ascribe all the threatening activity to the Republican/neocon/fundamentalist axis in the past 5 years.

I most strongly support Mr. Ratner’s efforts. I agree with his assessment of the hugely and lethally serious nature of the threat this Administration poses to Constitutional government and the rule of law. But we underestimate the threat and the challenge if we conveniently and self-servingly ascribe all the threatening activity to the Republican/neocon/fundamentalist axis in the past 5 years.

The rule of law and the appreciation for the rule of law have been quietly but consistently corroded for 40 years in this country. Once the great civil rights Acts were passed in the Glorious ’65, well-intentioned folks shrewdly and vigorously sought to apply civil and criminal law to the quick and inevitably forcible change of attitude and heart of a large segment (mostly, but not completely Southern) of American society. As the 1970s progressed, other Identities arose, each with its own Emergency that was so outrageously oppressing its victims that the established principles of Western Law and Justice were too slow; were in fact so slow that proper justicial praxis only further oppressed the victims. And under all manner of societal and political pressures, not only was the administration of Justice moved off its foundations and its carrying walls compromised, but decades ago the whole derangement was erected into a law-school philosophy and taught as The Right Way To Go. The similarity to the steps taken in Germany after 1933 to replace the rule of law with the rule of Party and People under one Leader … that similarity was not noted.

The sex-offender phenomenon that exploded in the mid-1990s was and continues to serve as an even more vivid illustration of the corrosion of the rule of law. Again an Emergency, again a class of Evil Others, again the rule of law ‘too slow’, so slow that to adhere to it was to disrespect the victims and side with the Evil and the Evildoers. Statutes of limitation, rules of evidence, due process ... those are already gone by the board; indefinite imprisonment (or ‘commitment’, a nicer word) on the basis not of criminal acts committed but on the basis of what the government thinks a person might do, the prisoner’s only recourse being boards and special courts who are more concerned with ‘security’ than with ‘liberty’ and the traditional praxis of Justice in the West, in America … much of this was already in place before 9/11, and all of it before Abu Ghraib and Gitmo made the news.

Can it be any surprise that this government that watched the American people so easily stampeded for all these years has now treacherously figured that it can turn such a degraded civil capacity to its own advantage? Habeas is under attack. But it is not the canary in the mine – the canaries are already gone, they have been dead for quite some time. It is happening here, to answer the question Sinclair Lewis asked in the 1930s. And as happened in the 1930s, it is the corrosion of the rule of law – now, as then, in response to a unique Emergency whose urgency and awfulness allow and even demand vigorous extralegal government action – that has allowed this vampire into the house, our house. And then as now it is being acclaimed because it is In A Good Cause.

The Administration is treacherous; the courts are half-packed, Congress is a rubber stamp, and the mainstream media are back to selling snake oil. The military lawyers – the military lawyers, for God’s sake – are stepping up to claim the role of defenders of Justice. It is in the hands of the People that the momentous question of our national integrity and our future rests; the buck has stopped.