Habeas Corpus

My blog has a little picture over on the right depicting little men applauding the suspension of habeas corpus in a law designed to bypass a federal court ruling. In 2004, a federal court ruled that federal courts had the right to consider challenges to the legality of the detention of foreign nationals held at Guantanamo. In 2006, (before the 2006 elections) a federal court ruled that the president did not have the authority to order the enemy combatants at Guantanamo to face military commissions. The government responded both times by obtaining congressional legislation restricting judicial review of the detentions. The Military Commissions Act (MCA) passed in 2006 removed the right of habeas corpus and set up tribunals to try detainees who were not US citizens. (BBC) The Military Commissions Act apllies to anyone the government will so deem to be an enemy combatant ever, past or future, giving the government the power to deny habeas corpus at will. Another heritage of the Republican disaster, the total loss of any sense of propriety that characterized the Republican party for the past 8 years, if not longer. We have had discussions about it, heated discussions. It has been pointed out that habeas corpus has been suspended in the past when the nation was in crisis. Abraham Lincoln himself suspended habeas corpus in the middle of the Civil War. He was mightily criticized at the time, but he stood firm. So did George Bush stand firm, my opponents have argued. History will judge him to have been right to do what he did. Abraham Lincoln was in a Civil War of major proportions when he suspended habeas corpus. George Bush and the Republican party suspended habeas corpus 5 years after 9/11 and 3 years after the invasion of Iraq and Mission Accomplished. George Bush and the Republican toadies suspended habeas corpus as a dodge, a scheme, a scam, a ruse...having nothing better to do than degrade the Presidency, degrade the compliant Republican Congress and make a end run around the laws of the land. For shame to compare Abraham Lincoln and the insidious mediocrities of our time!