The threat to our freedom.

Its Christmas time and you’re traveling and really excited to see your family and get some rest over the Holidays. You have a two week vacation and are ready for it. Instead you are under arrest. You are detained!! Why? What did I do? Tell me why!! No way! You have no rights, no one will tell you anything and then you are taken to some secret place blindfolded and then tortured for three days and prodded for information on the rest of them and what they have planned. What the hell are they talking about? No one will tell you anything and you get no phone call. Turns out you die and your family wonders what happened. Your name matched that of a terrorist on a watch list, and these clowns didn’t even check to see if it was the right person, they assumed. Why did this happen? The Military Commissions Act and the loss of the Writ of Habeas Corpus by George Bush and now it’s being misused and abused. Lat. "you have the body." (literally, "produce the body" from the Latin - meaning, broadly, "let this person go free or else give him a trial - you may not hold him forever with charging him with a crime") A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody.
The writ of habeas corpus serves as an important check on the manner in which state courts pay respect to federal constitutional rights. The writ is "the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action." The Court observed that “the writ of habeas corpus is one of the centerpieces of our liberties.




I. Habeas Corpus prevents tyranny and a dictatorship mentality that compromises the foundation of freedom and undermines the basis of the Constitution.

A. “Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham were presented with an opportunity to uphold the fundamental human right known as habeas corpus, or flinch and write a law that would retroactively make sure that George W. Bush could not be prosecuted for violations of habeas corpus in our overseas concentration camps and prisons. It was a contest between protecting the President and protecting the Constitution.
1. The Republican senators flinched, and chose Bush over the Constitution. In doing so, they turned their backs on a rule of law that stretches back over nearly eight centuries to an epic moment in 1215 on a meadow by the River Thames in the United Kingdom.
a. The modern institution of civil and human rights, and particularly the writ of habeas corpus, began in June of 1215 when King John was forced by a group of feudal lords to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede.
b. Two of the most critical parts of the Magna Carta were articles 38 and 39, which established the foundation for what is now known as "habeas corpus" laws. The concept of habeas corpus in the Magna Carta led directly to the Fourth through Eighth Amendments of our Constitution, and hundreds of other federal and state due process provisions.”
Articles 38 and 39 of the Magna Carta said:
"38 In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it.
"39 No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land."
II. This was radical stuff, and over the next four hundred years average people increasingly wanted for themselves these same protections from the abuse of governmental power that the feudal lords had gotten at Runnymede. But from 1215 to 1628, outside of the privileges enjoyed by the feudal lords, the average person could be arrested and imprisoned at the whim of the king with no recourse to the courts.
1. Then, in 1627, King Charles I overstepped, and the people snapped. Charles I threw into jail five knights in a tax disagreement and the knights sued the King, asserting their habeas corpus right to be free or on bail unless convicted of a crime.
A. King Charles I, in response, invoked his right to simply imprison anybody he wanted (other than the rich feudal lords), anytime he wanted, as he said, "per speciale Mandatum Domini Regis."
a. This is essentially the same argument that George W. Bush makes today for why he has the right to detain people without charges for as much as their entire lives solely on his own say-so: because he's in charge. And it's an argument now supported on the record by these Republicans who have chosen to betray America's founding principles in exchange for peace with the White House.
b. As Alexander Hamilton - arguably the most conservative of the Founders - wrote in Federalist 84:
"The establishments of the writ of habeas corpus ... are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any it [the Constitution] contains. ... [T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny. ...
"'To bereave a man of life,' says he, 'or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore A MORE DANGEROUS ENGINE of arbitrary government.''' [Capitals all Hamilton's from the original.]
B. The danger here lies in the absolute power of the government with no accountability. People being jailed for selling a Direct TV system that has the Hezbollah station, names being mixed up or identities confused and they have no chance to be brought before a court and charged.

1. This fits perfectly with certain tenants of the Patriot Act and we as free Americans must stand against this. We cannot and should not let the government have this much power.

Maureen Ugolini said in a letter to the editor: “I've been thinking of having a memorial service for our Constitution, Bill of Rights, Geneva Conventions, Magna Carta and a final farewell to Habeas Corpus. Do you think anyone will come?
Our congressional people have given the president the unilateral authority without limitation or restriction to abduct any person inside or outside America, citizen or not, to hold them indefinitely without trial, to keep their captivity secret, to deny access to judge or lawyer, to use ``evidence'' obtained from torture in prosecution, to torture as the president sees fit, all at the president's will or whim, without any possibility or remedy or any supervision whatsoever.
It's a recipe for a dictatorship. It gives the president the power to simply make anyone disappear.In my view this is the vilest piece of legislation in American history. Doubtless other countries have had uglier but this is the bottom of the barrel for America.I am now more fearful of my own government than of the ``terrorists.''” Conclusion
A. Keith Olbermann said in a special news cast on this subject on the signing of the Military Commissions Act and the loss of Habeas Corpus, “we have lived as if in a trance, we have lived… as people in fear. And now — our rights and our freedoms in peril — we slowly awake to learn that we have been afraid… of the wrong thing.
B. For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering: A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.
C. We have a long and painful history of ignoring the prophecy attributed to Benjamin Franklin that "those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
D. He goes on to say that the President has his blank check and he lied to get it and lied as he received it and what makes us think that he won’t lie as to how he will use it.
E. He then ends his speech as they did during the communist trials in the 1940’s, “Good night, and good luck.”

Electric law Library, Habeas Corpus (Retrieved November 27, 2006 from) http://www.lectlaw.com/def/h001.htm


Common Dreams Republicans Give In To Bush, Betray America by Thom Hartmann
(Copyright 1997-2006 Retrieved November 27, 2006 from) http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0925-35.htm



We the People: A Call to Take Back America (Paperback) by Thom Hartman, Gene Latimer, Paul Burke (Editor), Neil Cohn (Illustrator)


Copyright © 2006, Pantagraph Publishing Co. and Lee Enterprises (Retrieved November 27, 2006 from) http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2006/10/09/opinion/letters/119788.txt



(Retrieved November 27, 2006 from) http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/10/18/countdown-special-comment-death-of-habeas-corpus-your-words-are-lies-sir/