habeas schmabeas

So, the Senate and Congress are voting on (or maybe have already passed, either way, its gonna pass if not already) a bill on military tribunals that will remove the right to habeas corpus for essentially all Aliens, legal or Illegal. Here is the fun part of the bill:

`(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who--

`(A) is currently in United States custody; and

`(B) has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.

`(2) Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3) of section 1005(e) of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (10 U.S.C. 801 note), no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien detained by the United States who--

`(A) is currently in United States custody; and

`(B) has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.'.

(b) Effective Date- The amendments made by subsection (a) shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act, and shall apply to all cases, without exception, pending on or after the date of the enactment of this Act which relate to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of detention of an alien detained by the United States since September 11, 2001.

SEC. 7. TREATY OBLIGATIONS NOT ESTABLISHING GROUNDS FOR CERTAIN CLAIMS.

(a) In General- No person may invoke the Geneva Conventions, or any protocols thereto, in any habeas or civil action or proceeding to which the United States, or a current or former officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent of the United States, is a party, as a source of rights in any court of the United States or its States or territories.

Thats right, I actually looked up the text of a Senate bill... kinda dry and legalese, but its got these nice juicy parts in it. Ok, now for my notorious ignorant and naive legal analasis:

First, Wikipedia defines habeas corpus as:

a legal instrument or writ by means of which detainees can seek release from unlawful imprisonment. A writ of habeas corpus is a court order addressed to a prison official (or other custodian) ordering that a detainee be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he or she should be released from custody. The writ of habeas corpus in common law countries is an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.

I take this to mean that habeas corpus is a means by which a person can challenge their imprisonment and at the very least, be told why they are being imprisoned. This seems pretty damn close to our 6th ammendment...

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Anyway, the bill basically says that if you are not a US citizen, and are detained on the slightest suspicion of being an "enemy combatant" (a term which I believe is redefined in this same bill that can be interpreted to include peace activists, lawyers for terror suspects, and anyone who may have unintentionally contributed money to terrorist groups), you cannot file a writ of habeas corpus. In other words, you cant ask for proof that you are being held for any particular reason or that they have any proof against you. All they have to do is say that they are "Awaiting determination" as to whether or not you are an enemy combatant. So basically, lets say this was like 10 years ago when my mom was still a Canadian citizen. Lets say she wrote a $10 check to some charity that called her up and said "Good morning M'am, I am calling on behalf of People For The Better Treatment of Women, Children, Puppies, and Kittens in Afghanistan. Would you be able to help end the plight of cute things in our lovely country?", and that call happened to be coming from a suspected terrorist in another country, so it was tapped by NSA (Another bill in the house/senate that has a snowballs chance in hell of being blocked), they could arrest her, put her in Git'mo, and then when she was like "Hey, Im not sure whether I am being lawfully held. Can you tell me what I am charged with, and let me see whether you have any evidence against me?" They could just say "Not until we decide if you are an enemy combatant." And that process could take years, decades, or a lifetime.

OK, look this is all thrown together, and poorly sourced... But here is what it comes down to. Here is the way to solve the issue of how to treat "enemy combatants", terrorists, and foreign puppy drowners or any other undesirbales... ready for it? TREAT THEM EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING WAY YOU WOULD TREAT TERRORISTS, PUPPY DROWNERS, CHILD FUCKERS, MASS MURDERERS, RAPISTS, OR ANY OTHER PEOPLE WHO COMMIT AGREGEOUS CRIMES THAT HAPPEN TO BE AMERICANS. When Timothy McViegh blew up a few hundred people in Oklahoma City, there was no serious debate over whether he shoul dbe held without trial or waterboarded or denied the rights afforded by the constitution. The guy was a douche bag, who deserved what came to him (even if I dont support the death penalty). He killed hundreds of innocent people including a bunch of children, and he very well might have had friends who were planning similar attacks, but we didnt use unconventional methods to get information out of him or deny him habeas corpus. Our constitutional rights should apply to all people regardless of citizenship. If we find some dude in Fallujah who just shot up a group of cute little kids, we should detain him and then treat him exactly the same way we whould treat a person who shot up a school or abortion clinic or shopping mall in this country. Maybe it doesn't make us safer, but it keeps us from being horrible hyocrites when we talk about spreading democracy, or condemning human rights violations. We should view our constitution as a universal document which applies to all human beings. If we do that, then we dont even have to worry about the geneva conventions, which by the way this bill says cant be used as a source of rights in any US court. No body wants to help the terrorists... we all want them brought to justice, but the more we bastardize what our sountry is supposed to stand for, the more we let them win. They want to hurt us and the best way to do that is to make us A) scared shittless, regardless of whether there is a real threat or not and B) For us to revoke our own rights and make ourselves closer to their opressive and opaque forms of government. Our government is doing a fine job on both accounts.

I'll leave you with a great quote from senator Patrick Leahy and some links:

What has changed in the past five years that justifies not merely suspending, but abolishing the writ of habeas corpus for a broad category of people who have not been found guilty or even charged with any crime? What has changed in the last five years that our Government is so inept and our people so terrified that we must do what no bomb or attack could ever do by taking away the very freedoms that define America? Why would we allow the terrorists to win by doing to ourselves what they could never do and abandon the principles for which so many Americans today and through our history have fought and sacrificed? What has happened that the Senate is willing to turn America from a bastion of freedom into a caldron of suspicion ruled by a Government of unchecked power?

anyway, here are some interesting, if not scary links for your enjoyment:
Senator Leahy's Comments on the Bill
Full Text of Bill
Senator Obama's Comments.
Story about a guy held at git'mo for no real reason.
Bill Of Rights.

Live Free Or Diebold

Tuesday was the primary election for the midterms here in MD. That means we get to vote for nominees for such fun offices as state senate and school board at-large, as well as for Governor, Senate, and House nominees. Now, midterm elections tend to be the forgotten, boring elections where no one turns out to the polls (oh wait, thats all elections isn't it?) and the primaries are even less exciting (especially when there is only one Democratic contender for Gov. and you dont have time to make an educated choice on who should be the next sheriff of Montgomery County [now if only one of them ran on a platform of legalizing drugs and prostitution, they'd have my vote. They all ran on such unimportant platforms as fighting Montgomery's increasing gang violence... BORING]). All this considered though, I do look forward to going to the polls and excersizing my democratic right and obligation to elect my government, and its something I take pretty seriously. Its not just a biannual chance to go hang out at my old elementary school, although that is icing on the cake.


Why is it then, that when I went and cast my vote (only for offices I knew something about... I left the ones I hadn't researched blank) that I felt unfulfilled, without that warm and cozy feeling of standing up and being heard with my vote? Why was I left with electoral blue balls (would republicans have red balls?)? Its because of those damn diebold machines. I punch in my choices on the screen, press the button indicating I am done, and then review the summary of my choices and indicate that they are correct, and then this little credit card dealie pops out and the screen returns to its "Insert a card to begin voting" screen. No indication that my vote was actually counted. No indication that it was counted correctly. All I am left with is a little piece of plastic that I then stuff in a box in exchange for an "I Voted/ Yo Vote" sticker. Is it sad that the sticker is the only tangible thing I see showing that I voted? All I want is a piece of paper behind a glass pane, that prints out my choices, so that I can see that there is some tangible record somewhere of who I voted for. I dont want to take it home, or even have to stuff it in a box myself. Computerized voting is certainly a great idea as it makes vote counting much easier and more accurate, but I need, and we as voters should demand, some sort of tangible paper trail that we can verify and that can be resorted to in the case of a dispute and checked randomly to help verify the vote. We can't rely soley on the good faith of a company that has publicised ties to one of the major political parties (here) or the local election officials to give us an election free of tampering. Not to mention, without a paper trail there is no way to correct any software errors. I work in software development, and I know that even after vigorous testing there are bound to be some bugs, and I dont trust that their software is perfect (and in fact it is not. See below). In addition, there are well documented accounts of how easy it would be to hack one of these machines and change the votes on it (here and here). So even if the manufacturer and voting officials are completely honest, some random malicious voter could compromise the validity of the results. You can never have a perfect election, but you can at least have checks to help find fraud and to ensure voters that it is not rampant enough to throw the election.

All of this is stuff I've been complainging about for a while, and really, there has been a reasonable ammount of public outcry about it, even if it hasn't been enough to make a real difference. Even Gov. Erlich, in one of his few moments of doing something useful, spoke out for requiring a paper trail, but the measure didnt make it through the state legislature (here). But matters were even worse Tuesday in Montgomery County. Evidently, when the polls opened Tuesday morning, the flimsy credit card things they use to validate your identity and unlock the voting machine to cast your ballot... Somewhat important pieces of the election process, were still in Rockville. All of them for the entire county. This meant that for at least the first hour that the polls were open, no one could actually vote. Because of this the polls remained open an extra hour that night until 9PM. I showed up with my parents at the polling place at about 8:50 as we had eaten dinner and done some more research on the candidates before going to vote. My Dad and I got signed in and then went to our voting machines and cast our ballots. I finished first, then My Dad, and then we waited around for a while for my Mom. Usually she takes a while as she is less comfortable with computers than my Dad and I. Then we realized that she was sitting at a table and filling out a paper ballot. I found this odd but figured maybe she couldn't figure out the machine and had opted for the paper ballot. I asked the poll worker who said that she had come in after 8 and therefore had to fill out a paper "provisional" ballot. This was bullshit as she had come in with us before 8. It turned out that this was not the case and the poll worker was mistaken. However the truth was no less annoying. It turns out that when the poll worker working the sign-in desk put her little credit card in and brought up her information to activate the card, the computer crashed. Since it had already signed her in to the system and counted her as already having voted(even though the card was stuck in the computer and had to be cut up when it was removed), she could not be given another card and therefore could not vote on a computer. So, due to faulty computers, she had to fill out a provisional ballot that will not even be counted unless the margin of victory is small enough for the number of provisional ballots to possibly make a difference. Furthermore, she had to put her drivers license number and name along with other personal information on the envelope that she placed the ballot in. So much for anonymous voting. She was so fed up with the extra hassle, she almost left without voting. Oh, and as I alluded to before, anyone who came in after 8 was given a provisional ballot. Nevermind that the polls were still open and the reason they were still open was because of a horrible screw up in the morning and there was no justification for making their ballots count any less than anyone else. The poll officials said that my Mom was one of at least 5 or 6 people at that polling place who had had to do provisional ballots because of a computer crash, and there are lots of reports of this happening at otehr polling places (see links below). The total numbers for the day at that polling place were less than 500, so thats at least one percent of all voters who had to cast second class ballots due to a computer glitch. Unacceptable.

There are a lot of other reports of voting problems in Maryland, which I will not go into as I didn't personally experience them, and you can read about them elsewhere (here, here, and here). I have always thought that MD was a pretty safe electoral state and that it would never fall prey to the problems of Florida and Ohio in the last 2 elections, but due to these crappy systems, now I am affraid we might. It really doesnt matter whether it is intentional efforts to disenfranchise voters and/or change the results, or if it is an innocent computer glitch or a lack of verifiable results, but if we can't be confident that our election results are as close to the actual desires of the voting public as possible, then our system of goverment doesnt work. Democracy relies on the people being able to shape and change the goverment with their vote. But if there is any doubt at all as to whether those votes will actually be counted, then how are we supposed to have faith in our government. President Bush said after the 2004 elections that he had a "Mandate" and that being reelected confirmed that the American people aggreed with his policies and most notably with the War and the current direction there. That election was won by a very close margin. If we cant be almost absolutely sure that it was the actual desire of the people then our system has failed. The possible reprocussions of that election are enormous, especially if it was not decided properly. The sad truth is that without paper trails and more reliable machines, we can't be sure that it was.