Sheridan: Con-Law

HABEAS CORPUS REPEALED

Runnymede.  1215.  King John.  Held at sword-point by noble lords, barons, earls, and knights.  Give us justice or give us death, they say, in anticipation of Patrick Henry.  Or maybe he was copying them.  Take not our lives or our land except by the law of the land.  This translates to our "due process of law."

America is big on due process of law, except for people we don't like or who we think don't deserve it, such as people we regard as enemies.  Ants in hives aren't big on due process either, but we're supposed to be different than ants.

Habeas corpus means "You, Mr. Sheriff, or Mr. Anybody, have the body of this person, and we want him here in this court so you can explain why you are holding him, and it had better be for a legal reason, or we'll order you to release him, and if you don't, we'll jail you for contempt."

Mr. Sheriff, the king's agent, must then appear with the body, the prisoner, and explain why he's holding  you, let's say.  This is your only ticket out of the dungeon, jail, mental hospital, brig, or prison camp such as in Guantanamo, Cuba, where we have this base in which we treat people not very nicely.

But suppose the people who run the military prison at Guantanamo get Congress to pass a law requiring the courts to dismiss all habeas petitions filed on behalf of the prisoners.  We would never do that here in America, would we?

Buzz!   Wrong!!!  You got it wrong.  You thought America was good, didn't you?  So did I.  I hate to be disillusioned, don't you?

Read all about how we are our own worst enemy whenever we get scared enough to jettison our hard earned protections, in Jeffrey Toobin's New Yorker article, below.  We have met the enemy and he his us.  So said Walt Kelly's Pogo.

GUANTANAMO: NO HABEAS, NO RIGHTS IN FEDERAL COURT

Lyle Denniston posted this to SCOTUS blog, on a decision in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., reporting on a decision broadly upholding the government's asserted right to detain indefinitely prisoners it deems enemy combatants, without a hearing, for as long as the political branches, i.e. the President and Congress, deem it appropriate, i.e. until the never-ending war on terrorism ends.

That sounds like a war on crime, to me, where it's getting harder to understand why people apprehenced for committing crimes against the United States are not brought before U.S. tribunals.

Stashing them off-shore seems to make all the difference to this judge.

All you have to do is point to 9-11 and say we're at war.

Why don't we have a war on drugs and send half the prison population to Guantanamo too?

Oh.

We already have a war on drugs? 

Pardon me.

How about a war on poverty.

Everybody poorer than me can be sent to Cuba and smoke cigars.

We can make the world safe for corporate socialism, and stop wasting money on poor people who don't know what to do with it anyway.

As long as we're at it, why don't we wipe out Corporate Welfare Queens, you know, those big agribusinesses that get paid a lot of money for not growing things, or the ones where the CEO is charged with looting the publicly traded corporation of $600 million.  This is the $6,000 shower curtain case being retried in NY now.

Didn't CEO Dennis Kozloski know that interior designers charge a commission based on the amount spent redecorating?  Why would the designer care if the shower curtain cost six grand?  A $600 commission is better than $1.98.  Why should the CEO care?  It isn't his money he's spending.  If it were, the $20 shower curtain would've been plenty.