(no subject)

[pat]

I am not a political blogger. I don't have the emotional stamina, for one thing.

And certain issues are too big, too horrible to wrap my head around. The one issue I do tend to blog about, capital punishment as practiced in this country, is evil, but its horrors have existed a long time in one form or another -- it's nothing new.

The "War on Terror" *spit* has given us a new evil: attacks on the right of habeas corpus. Although there have been arguments and legislation over the limits of habeas review -- again, primarily in the context of capital punishment -- there has not in my lifetime ever been anyone argue that a certain group of people should be denied habeas review altogether.

The Senate just voted to abolish habeas corpus for prisoners at Gitmo.

It is a position that even Antonin Scalia has found repugnant: "The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive." (Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004), dissent).

It matters. pecunium, who thankfully is a political blogger -- and an intelligent one -- says why.

This is very serious.

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What would you say to people who argue that they aren't citizens, and therefore, it doesn't matter? (See my current blog entry.)