In Mother England, Parliament voted to allow the detention of suspected terrorists for up to 42 days without charges being brought against them. Here in the former British colonies, the Supreme Court of the United States voted to allow suspected terrorists to challenge their detention.
The monumental events underscore the relentless assaults on civil liberties in both nations with long and shared democratic traditions, the willingness of crass politicians to peddle fear for their own gain, and the important distinction between those who cling to true conservative principles and others who label themselves "conservatives," but who are, in fact, radical revisionists and naked partisans.
The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision reaffirmed the ancient right to habeas corpus enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and ruled that detainees being held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, do indeed have the right to challenge their imprisonment before a judge.
The principle is fundamental to the rights of all accused. The fact that four justices were willing to deny it to the detainees is frightening. It is also a reminder of how important the outcome of the presidential election is, when such a vital right hinges on a single vote on the high court.
Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion -- written for the majority -- simply protected the constitutional guarantee that all accused persons enjoy the basic right to go before an independent judge, a neutral fact-finder, to challenge the basis of their detention.
The Bush administration and allies in Congress tried to do an end run around the constitutional protection that can only be suspended under conditions of invasion and rebellion. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 attempted to offer an alternative, but no civil court access for the detainees.
Justice Kennedy wrote that process "falls short of being a constitutionally adequate solution," because it denied detainees "the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus."
Reaching into the soul of our threatened national character, Kennedy declared, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."
While a disturbing number of Americans simply shrug off the unlawful confinement, torture and brutality, and wholesale denial of civil rights for the 270 men held at Guantanamo, the rest of the world watches with disgust and notes the utter hypocrisy of "fighting to protect our freedoms" while trampling on the rights of helpless prisoners.
George Washington University Constitutional Law professor Jonathan Turley told MSNBC, "What we really gained here is credibility to show the world that having an idiot-proof system doesn't mean you don't have idiots. It means you can transcend them. It means you have a legal system that can be better than its leaders."
Justice Kennedy's eloquent opinion tracing the history and profound importance of habeas corpus was in sharp contrast to the hysterical hyperbole Justice Antonin Scalia offered in the snarling tirade he called his dissent.
He claimed, "The game of bait-and-switch that today's opinion plays upon the nation's commander in chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
Scalia wants us to think all the prisoners at Guantanamo will be quickly released, provided plane tickets by the ACLU to al-Qaeda training camps, and then they'll then head back this way with a vengeance.
As Turley noted, "The suggestion that people will die because we've given legal process to those who we've accused is really a bizarre and obnoxious thought."
In fact, the court's decision, the third rebuke of the Bush administration's gulag in Guantanamo, doesn't release a single detainee. It simply gives them the right to petition for a hearing before a neutral fact-finder.
The "worst of the worst," as former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld called them, were, for the most part, people rounded up "on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments," according to an eight-month investigation by McClatchy Newspapers.
Of the 770 men who've been at Guantanamo, six detainees -- less than 1 percent -- have been publicly charged "with direct involvement in the 9/11 attacks." About 500 have been released. Scalia is the presiding legal thug on the court, a supreme political hack disguised in judicial robes, and he has consistently used his position to advance a partisan agenda.
He is especially fond of promoting the "unitary executive" theories -- the president-is-a-monarch madness -- his hunting buddy Vice President Dick Cheney has been peddling since Richard Nixon resigned for his (by Bushevik standards) modest crimes
Imagine Big Dick and Nino Scalia sipping expensive, single-barrel bourbon, sitting in a duck blind, blasting away at easy-pickings water fowl provided for their foul amusement.
Cheney and Scalia venture out a couple days a year, and rich supporters let them pretend they're hunting as they shoot countless birds with the skill of drunk Texans looking for grouse in the bush on a Sunday afternoon.
Dick and Tony do fit the roles of medieval grandees as they plot to create a government run by fiat. They want the president to be able to brand any poor souls he chooses as "enemy combatants," never file charges against them, deny them legal counsel, lock them up indefinitely and insist that even allowing a federal judge to review their cases will result in Armageddon.
Across the pond, the British are experiencing their own erosion of freedoms as Prime Minster Gordon Brown won a narrow victory in the House of Commons in an assault on one of the most cherished rights enshrined in the Magna Carta, the 800-year-old document containing the fundamental elements of British freedom.
The right not to be imprisoned by the state without charge or reason is taking another hit. Already people could be held for 28 days without charges in the United Kingdom, the longest period among any of the Western democracies.
But the Labour Party is way down in the polls, and Brown decided this was a good time to press Parliament to extend the detention period to 42 days, in the name of protecting Britain from terrorists. He claimed he didn't want to do the dirty work in a "panic" situation.
The politically desperate Brown met with President George W. Bush the other day, and they surely discussed the use of fear as a political tool and the need to trample on liberties in defense of freedom.
The 42-day terror detention plan passed 315-to-306. Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party provided the nine-vote margin of victory. Brown promised them, among other things, a break on water rates. Eight centuries of freedom down the loo so the Orangemen can soak their gardens with subsidized water bills.
The opposition Conservative Party stood on principle. Their leader, David Cameron, said, "Isn't it clear the terrorists want to destroy our freedom, and when we trash our liberties we do their work for them." Wouldn't it be nice to find one prominent Republican "conservative" with the guts to say that?
Tony Benn, the venerable leader of the Labour Party's radical wing, understood the historic significance of the vote. He lamented, "I never thought I'd be in this House of Commons when Magna Carta was repealed. It is Osama bin Laden's biggest victory."
The English-speaking peoples, long champions of liberty, are watching a slow strangulation of fundamental freedoms, all in the name of national security.
Like so many others, I was shocked and saddened by the death of Tim Russert, NBC's political guru and moderator of "Meet the Press." I first met Tim back in the 1970s,working on the campaigns of Democratic candidates in New York. He was bright, hardworking and fun.
I made the jump from politics to journalism a few years before he did, and we exchanged letters about the experience of those transitions. When he took over "Meet the Press," Niagara Falls native Colette Rhoney was among his first and finest producers.
Tim was a frequent traveler to Albany, as I was for several years. In the winter, plane flights between Buffalo and Albany were always dicey, with frequent cancellations and long delays.
One cold and stormy night, I was in the lounge in the Albany airport with former assemblyman Dick Hogan, Sen. John Daly and former senator Jim McFarland, then a member of New York's Public Service Commission.
As we enjoyed some gentle libations, my companions -- all Republicans -- started picking on me, the lone Democrat in the group. They worked me over pretty good and were having great fun ganging up on me.
Then I spotted Tim. He saw my plight and quickly joined us. Russert and Gallagher defended the Democrats against our GOP adversaries. The banter was all in fun, and the five Irish pols enjoyed the good-natured kidding.
Like millions of Americans, especially people from Western New York, I will miss Tim but always remember his warmth, wit and great laugh.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | June 17 2008 |