We all know about the war crimes our current administration has been committing, most recently with “waterboarding,” which, despite their Orwellian description of it as an “enhanced interrogation technique,” is torture, and has been determined to be so by every war crimes tribunal who has examined the subject. The Japanese military and government were prosecuted for waterboarding at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. Nothing has changed.
And as I’ve blogged about before, habeas corpus is so important that, without it, you have no other rights.
Now, Ron Paul has introduced HR 3835: The American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007, “To restore the Constitution’s checks and balances and protections against government abuses as envisioned by the Founding Fathers.” This bill will restore the checks and balances dismantled by Congress and the Bush Administration, restore habeas corpus, reject torture, challenge the constitutionality of presidential signing statements, and many other reversals of violations of our basic liberties.
Now for the outrageous part: this bill has no cosponsors whatsoever. Not one. And there is no corresponding bill in the Senate.
You should be angry. You should be outraged. You should contact your representatives and demand that they cosponsor this bill. You can easily do so here.
Also, since most of the presidential candidates are members of Congress, if you support one of them, write to them and demand that they cosponsor this bill if they’re in the House, or introduce a similar bill if they’re a Senator.
Do this especially if they’re talking about impeachment. As I’ve also blogged about before, it’s kind of convenient that the Democrats have waited to do this now that impeaching Bush & Cheney will put a Democrat in the White House. But to be in favor of impeachment but not be for this bill? What’s the point in impeaching Bush and Cheney if the horrible acts infringing our liberty continue?
I’ve heard talk of a vote of “no confidence” for members of Congress who don’t support impeachment. Maybe the vote of “no confidence” should be for those who don’t support this bill.
These are our basic liberties. It’s the Constitution 101. It’s their oath of office.
If they don’t support it, maybe they should be thrown out along with the President.
Oh, most of them should have been thrown out with the president long ago. They’re simply not interested in doing anything other than toeing the party line or looking “tough on terror”.
The irresponsible media won’t talk about it, and most people won’t even care. They’ll flip on the news for maybe 5 minutes, see some speech about how the politician is “fighting to make it easier to catch terrorists”, and support them without bothering to research what that means or how it will affect them.
When we have Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton as the “frontrunners” for the nomination of their respective parties, I think it’s a lot more than just Congress we have to fight against. I know it’s an unpopular thing to say, but I think the American people are largely to blame.
A suspect has a right to remain silent. ANY method of trying to MAKE him talk is torture. The policy debate now is only about how much torture is too much.
The bill has two cosponsors now. Dennis Kuchinich is, by no surprise, one of them. I expected Kuchinich would ride along, he often works with Paul on issues like these.