In attempt to minimize the “I wasn’t aware of this” responses to my current poll, I want to make sure all my readers have a chance to learn about this incredibly important — and scary — moment in our history. From Wikipedia, “The writ of habeus corpus…is an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.” It represents the very cornerstone of our freedom. Without it, we are nothing more than a dictatorship, with leaders who can “lock [someone] up and throw away the key without giving them a chance to prove their innocence in a court of law.”

The new law allows the president or national security adviser to declare a person an enemy combatant, which permits them to be tried in a military court without the writ of habeus corpus. It also allows for “coercive interrogation techniques” and explicitly forbids torture; however, that point is completely moot because the law also says that the same person — the president — also gets to decide what is torture.

By signing this law, Bush has directly violated the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the very foundations of this country. Yet he has “suggested that votes against the law show that Democrats would not protect the country from another terrorist attack” (proving my point about fear mongering in my recent article). Yeah, right. Because you can’t protect us unless you break the law and destroy our democracy, right Mr. Bush? Guess what: by doing so, you’re helping the terrorists win. They hate our way or life and our freedom for all people, no matter what race, gender, or creed. By taking away our freedoms and the basic rights of our democracy, we are playing into the terrorists’ hands in their quest to destroy us. Great work, Mr. President.

Let’s not forget that this bill passed because of the support of most of the Republicans and some Democrat members of the house, so they should be held equally accountable when you go to the polls this year. Not one of these idiots who supported this bill should ever get your vote again. To see who voted which way on the bill, check out the voting record on the Bill of Rights Defense Committee’s web site.

It doesn’t get more sickly ironic than this…the Bush administration is currently seeking to pass legislation that will protect them from prosecution for violations of the War Crimes Act passed by a Republican House and Senate in 1996 that criminalizes violations of the Geneva conventions for conduct during war and threatens the death penalty for those that violate it.

Everyone read that sentence again to make sure it sinks in.

Specifically, the legal shield they are trying to establish is for conduct in 2002, for actions taken under a presidential order that the Supreme Court has already declared illegal. The order was illegal because it arbitrarily declared current prisoners of war exempt from the Geneva conventions and authorized torture as a means to extract information. Since the order was illegal and the president and his administration have actually violated the Geneva conventions on torture, they are technically guilty of war crimes and can be prosecuted and held to the death penalty! However, that is what this new legislation they are trying to pass will prevent.

How can any other nation on earth possibly respect us anymore? We are no longer a nation of laws. We are a nation of thugs, our top leaders are now clearly above the law, laws that they have made, free to violate it without punishment and who even have the balls to make new laws exempting themselves from the law. Between this and the spying on American citizens without a court order and trying to control the press…our country looks, sounds, and smells like a fascist dictator state. What happened to democracy? What happened to this ideal that we were raised to love? What happened to balance of power? Oh that’s right, we handed the whole country over to a single party, one that’s controlled by irrational right-wing idiots who would choose fear and war-mongering to run the country over reason and logic any day of the week. People, your vote counts more than ever. Give power back to moderate, reasonable people, people who can fight terrorism without violating every other article in the Bill of Rights and without killing hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens in other countries. The midterm elections are coming up this fall, and you’d better get out there and vote if you want any resemblance of the America you once knew to remain by the time Bush finally leaves office.