Does anyone here realize that with the death of Habeus Corpus, any person in the United States can be jailed without charges indefinitely?

It doesn't just apply to detainees. It extends to anyone the Justice Department and the administration deem important enough to deny them the right of any rights.

The Senate has failed disgracefully in protecting the rights of Americans against this kind of injustice.

As someone who has an intimate knowledge of the Great Writ (long story, no time to tell), I can say with a certainty that if we do not restore the Habeus Writ to all people detained by the United States, the Constitution is a piece of used toilet paper.

It is indeed the worst single legal precedent ever enacted in this country's history, and a black mark against our vaunted "democratic" ideals.

Ironclad:

And the point of witnesses being killed - well, in the Middle East the family connections are usually so strong that any informer usually is from within the kinship group (or else the relatives of a witness can be reached). My point is that to have a normal trial with discovery rules in place - well, that would lead to the elimination of a lot of potential witnesses (through murder or intimidation) This is not speculation - I just read the paper from the middle east and observe how common this is in this part of the world.

We have an argument here that people with a serious commitment to "family values" can not be afforded full civil rights! That it's simply impractical.

I guess we can just dump trials for the Bush mafia, and stick 'em straight in Gitmo. And pretty much the entire state of Alabama.

"In the Mousawi trial much of the time was spent trying to conceal the sources of the evidence for exactly the reasons I noted above - as well as to conceal some of other methods used to obtain it. In the cold war, there were rarely spy trials for the same reason - too much was revealed in order to obtain a conviction."

You're full of shit.

In the Mousawi trial, the time was spent trying to conceal the fact that there was no evidence, it wasn't spent concealing the source or methods used to generate it.

No matter how much the Yawping Class here wants to make it an I'm rubber you're glue partisan issue. It's not. If the Congress can't or won't do something about this and spends it time passing Retroactive Un-Allowing the War bills then it's possible that entire system or the people in it had irretrievably broken down. It's a shame really. If the folks here are representative then it will all come to nothing except name calling, blogging and finger pointing. Oh well I guess they'd rather have a partisan Democratic Congress that does nothing. You get a gold star.

I was wrong I found one of my posts on Politico.

The Republicans won the battle for the elimination of habeas corpus when they convinced the American people that the F.B.I. was helpless because of that supposed limitation. In fact, as we know from the 9/11 commission and George Tenet, the 9/11 failure did not come at the "gathering" level of the intelligence service, it came at the link to the president himself. Tenet knew it was coming, Condi gave Bush a intelligence estimate entitled "Bin Laden intends to attack in the U.S." The failure in the system came at the level of Tenet, Rice, and Bush. To correct this failure, I propose the following legislation:

The Democrats should introduce a bill that requires the president to be supervised full time by a nanny who is to make sure that the president acts appropriately on all national security memorandums before he goes out into the Texas scrub to hack away at some weeds.

By doing so, the Democrats will demonstrate to the American people that they are on top of, and genuinely concerned the the national security situation as it relates to Islamic terrorism.

"I mentioned the Zakarias Mousawi trial because it was a circus that lasted something like 3 or 4 years? You want to put some hundred people on trial with the same duration - and supply resources for each? There are not an infinite level of resources in the court system for that = so I do not think that it is an unfair or misinformed speculation. Again - I did never implied that these people should rot in a cell either - but I do not think that justice would be served in the normal court system."

Ironclad: I don't think you're "trolling," but I understand why your comments would upset people. And I apologize in advance if my comments are bitchy; if they are, it's because I'm one of the people upset by your posts, although I think they're worthy of a thoughtful response.

The reason the Massaoui trial was a drawn-out circus was largely because the government's case was bullshit. Similarly, the "long, expensive" trial of that college professor in Florida (whose crime was posting some stuff on the Internet criticizing the U.S. government) ended in an acquittal because the state had wildly "overreached" with its charges. ("Overreaching" is a euphemism, I guess, for charging someone with crimes he didn't commit.)

These sideshow trials, in other words, actually illustrate the importance of granting strong process rights to anyone -- yes, even dark-skinned Muslims -- accused of criminal wrongdoing.

"Expensive?" "Time-consuming?" Are you kidding? We're talking about the most fundamental rights enjoyed by citizens in a democracy. In my view, there's nothing more worthy of our time and money than a criminal justice system with meaningful procedural protections and a powerful presumption of innocence. To put it another way -- and I mean this: I would rather be blown up (or paralyzed, or blinded) by a car bomb than falsely convicted of a crime and imprisoned.

As I said, I don't get the impression that you're simply out to rile everyone up. Can we change your mind on this? I hope so.

We've all been hearing, for so long now, that "everything is different after 9/11" -- because "al-Queda is a 'completely different kind of enemy'" that it takes some considerable amount of doing to unlearn the message.

But this endlessly repeated mantra -- "everything is different" -- simply isn't true. Other countries dealt with terrorism for years -- decades -- before the catastrophic WTC attacks. If anything, America's geographic and cultural isolation is to thank for the safety from terrorists that we have traditionally enjoyed, and will continue to enjoy, come what may.

Some terrorist attacks are inevitable. We're not allowed to say that, but it's true. Think of Oklahoma City. Torturing people won't mean that there will never be another bomb. Even outlawing guns won't mean that there won't be another bomb. Getting rid of the courts (or replacing them, at least for non-white defendants or non-citizen defendants, with "bargain courts") won't mean that there will never be another bomb. There will be another bomb. Inevitably. But there won't be many bombs, and it makes sense to me to treat these bomb plots as what they are: crimes.

Why was Timothy McVeigh treated as a criminal, rather than as an enemy soldier? He was arrested, given a lawyer, tried, sentenced, etc. He had the chance to hear the evidence against him, to present his own evidence, to appeal the jury's verdict, to allege error by the trial judge. It was very "expensive and time-consuming" to afford him these rights, but he got them -- even though he was an "enemy combatant," according to the current jargon.

Why is Massaoui different, in your estimation? Is it because of his tangential connection to the nebula that is al-Queda? Is it because he's non-white, or Muslim? (Of course you'll say "no," but think about it: does race play a role in your thinking about these issues? If so, it wouldn't make you unusual -- or evil. Don't just hit back defensively: think about this!)

I hope you'll reconsider your talking points on this issue. You're wrong about this one. The "choice" we face is not, as you've said, "simple" -- and it is not a choice between a "police action" or "war."