Did Anyone Catch the End of the Constitution?
My essay written in October 2006 – Reposted in light of the recent Boumediene v. Bush decision.
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Buried under the Mark Foley sex scandal and the school shootings was news of far greater consequence to Americans, especially if we want to remain the “land of the free” and “home of the brave”. Last week, a momentous piece of legislation breezed through the Senate unanimously after sailing through the House. When the president signs the Military Commissions Act (H.R. 6166 or the “torture bill”) into law, it will legalize the Bush Administration’s disturbing power grab, and make mince meat of freedom in America.
The Military Commissions Act codifies the Bush Administration’s enormously increased powers to detain, interrogate, and prosecute alleged terrorists and who they decide to be a material supporter of the alleged terrorists. As Yale Law professor Bruce Ackerman stated in a recent Los Angeles Times editorial, the legislation “authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.”
Yet, defenders of the torture bill will say that American citizens have nothing to worry about, because the bill only refers to aliens engaged in war against America. However, this turns out to be false, as many have pointed out that the legislation’s vague and overly arbitrary definitions for “unlawful enemy combatant” also includes American citizens. As Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, stated in a recent essay, the Military Commissions Act “empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, ‘unlawful enemy combatants.’”. (http://counterpunch.org/cohn09302006.html)
What Ackerman, Cohn, and others are saying should alarm us because our freedoms are the essence of America, and they are being forsaken for military justice, in the name of fighting terrorism. While we are continually inundated with threats of terror, we should fear the loss of our freedoms far more than the threat of terrorism. If the threat of terrorism requires us to give up our freedoms and trust the president, then why did the Founding Fathers bother to even establish a Constitution with separation of powers and a Bill of Rights? Any ardent student of history will remember why the Founding Fathers established 3 branches of government, with checks and balances on each other, and a Bill of Rights. The goal was to preserve the people’s liberties and limit the powers of the federal government.
The Founding Fathers understood that the biggest threat to a country comes not from an external enemy, but from the government itself.
It should also give us great consternation that something so important, such as the evisceration of American freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights, is not receiving the massive attention that it deserves. Everywhere, people can be heard saying “did you catch the Yankee game?” It is time people turned their attention to matters far weightier than any baseball game. Did anyone catch the end of the Constitution?
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