Hullabaloo

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

 
A Day Which Will Live In Infamy




by digby

Today President Bush took the constitution and tore it into little pieces.

President Bush signed legislation Tuesday authorizing tough interrogation of terror suspects and smoothing the way for trials before military commissions, calling it a "vital tool" in the war against terrorism.

Bush's plan for treatment of the terror suspects became law just six weeks after he acknowledged that the CIA had been secretly interrogating suspected terrorists overseas and pressed Congress to quickly give authority to try them in military commissions.

[...]

The American Civil Liberties Union said the new law is "one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history."

"The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.

"Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act," he said.

Yet, here is the very next sentence in that AP report:

The swift implementation of the law is a rare bit of good news for Bush as casualties mount in Iraq in daily violence.

I assume that was written without irony.


I don't ever want to hear anyone on the right talk about moral values again. They are concepts which they clearly do not understand. And if they dare to bring up the Bible or Jesus Christ after this I will laugh in their faces, knowing that by their own standards they are going straight to hell for what they've done.

Remember these faces:



Where's St. John McCain? How odd that he isn't there to enjoy the poisonous fruits of his labor.



Update: Jack Balkin talks about the new law, here.
digby 10/17/2006 10:19:00 AM |