Your Habeas is in my Corpus

Okay, okay. I hear ya. Loud and clear. But Please please please, understand, I am not a politically insightful person, by nature. Only when something is so blaringly, obviously wrong, will I pick up my torch and get my couch potato butt off the political denial couch. I am, sadly, one of those Americans, who are so tired and fed up with all things political, that I bury my head in the sand and just wait, hope and pray for the day we get a true leader in our white house. And I don't care if they are democrat or republican. I just want someone to stand up to the world and LEAD.

But now, it seems, I am, in affect, defenseless. I learned something today. I learned about Habeas Corpus. And I learned that we as American’s no longer have a right that was give us many hundreds of years ago. This change in our society and the comments I’m going to make transcends past your political circle. It shouldn’t matter if your democrat or republican, because right now, you can be put in jail for no reason and you do not have the right to object to your imprisonment. Heck, you can be put in jail for just being a democrat or a republican.

What is this habeas corpus? Did I learn about it in school and just purge the memory because I figured there’s no way that THAT freedom would be taken from me?

Literally, in Latin: “you [should] have the body"

A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate. In a nut shell, it allows an individual who has been imprisoned to request a court hearing in objection to being detained and to determine whether or not that person is in prison lawfully. The prisoner gets an opportunity to find out why they are being held, and then prove why they should not be held. That right – gone! The bill simply removes a suspect’s right to challenge his detention in court.

I sat and watched President Bush, smugly sign an act that wipes out all our safety nets that were in place to stop illegal imprisonment. This bill is designed to make you believe that its about seeking and detaining “enemy combatants”. Where as, what it appears to do is allow anyone of us to be detained and tortured without proving that we may be the enemy. It provides a power that should be frightening to all Americans (republicans or democrats alike).

Now as I stated, I am not a political rough rouser…never claimed to be, and likely never will never be. But this is a scary time in our society. Does anyone believe for one minute that this bill isn’t going to be used to CYA in the event that “tortured” prisoners should rear their heads again?

Ken has been writing about this for a couple of days now. I sloughed off his emails and blogs and put him in a category of paranoid. And yet, this idea of losing habeas corpus has been lingering in the back of my mind. What was all this hoolala about anyhow? So I decided to be educated, at least a little, and read about his right we no longer have. And now, I think paranoia is the least of our worries.

This bill tosses aside all legal and moral restraints as the president deems it necessary – these are the fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law. The constitution as we know it, and as we respect it and live by it, seems to be crumbling at our feet.

I'm curious as to your thoughts on this.

So I leave you with this, Keith Oberman stated in a special report yesterday, “Good night, and good luck.”

Habeas Corpus was put into an Act in 1679. Read it. Learn some history. I’ve been told those who don’t understand history are bound to repeat it.