Enabled … – Moon of Alabama

October 17, 2006

Enabled …

"We will answer brutal murder with patient justice," Bush said. "Those who kill the innocent will be held to account."
[…]
"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.
Bush signs terror interrogation law

"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures…The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is in itself a limited one." – Hitler told the Reichstag.
[…]
Hitler needed 31 non-Nazi votes to pass it. He got those votes from the Center Party after making a false promise to restore some basic rights already taken away by decree.
Hitler’s Enabling Act

12 Senate Democrats and 32 House Democrats voted for the bill as well.
A ‘Clear Message’

Posted by b on October 17, 2006 at 19:13 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Balkin

It is a travesty of law under the forms of law. It is the accumulation of executive, judicial, and legislative powers in a single branch and under a single individual.
It is the very essence of tyranny.

Posted by: b | Oct 17 2006 19:34 utc | 1

On the UK legislation for this that was fucked out by real democrats.

So, are these two men so dangerous that it is necessary to discard a central tenet of our society, the right to a fair trial, in order to protect that same society? Well, it sort of depends…
There were two things which were clear from McNulty’s interview.
Firstly, the government is going to blame the judges for this. To paraphrase Macnulty, if those pesky judges hadn’t ruled that indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial was illegal, this would never have happened.
Because in Blair’s Britain, an independent judiciary sworn to protect the fundamental principles of our society is an unwelcome hindrance to executive power. The notion that such a hindrance is vital in order to guard against the unchecked power of an elected dictatorship is just soooo Twentieth Century. Those who are concerned that the government is destroying our society in order to save it (to borrow a phrase) are relics from the past; they just don’t get it. Today, we live in a brave new world. The rules of the game have changed.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Oct 17 2006 19:35 utc | 2

Coda: Symphony of Madness
The word Coda, meaning the final passage of a musical structure:
Origin. a section of a movement. Added at the end to clinch matters rather than to develop the music further. However, in the symphony’s of Mozart, Haydn, and especially Beethoven, the coda came to have integral formal significance, becoming at times 2nd development section and often containing new material.
The end of the begining, or the begining of the end.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 17 2006 19:35 utc | 3

those who would refuse to see in this culmination, in this choreography of carnage, this pornography of power & privelege anything other than the lessons hitler taught us with the enabling act are without any understanding of history, at all
guthman bey mistakes the man ( the litte austrian with a tic) with the power an elite possessed, at any price. the cheney bush junta are directly & distinctly connected to the power possessed by an elite at any price
when these criminals are finished with slaughtering people here & there – they will finish this festin – that they laughingly call jurisprudence & it is a measure of the deomcrats complete complicity in the crime – that such an indeceny, such a public indecency – can be enacted
b, is correct, as are others here – who consistently make the parallels. i would go further & say that while the nsdpa represented in extremis – european politics as usual (& the fact that the nazi’s nuremburg laws in relation to the jewish people were completely consistent with catholic law as it had been enacted before) – these criminals who would scorn the so called small time gangsters of the balkans – have reduced the political life to something even cruder. milosevic could not & did not have the willing complicity that the bush cheney junta enjoys at every level
the cheney bush junta have in a moment converged the complete corruption of 19th century political life with the violent machinery of mass destruction taught by the 20th
they are fascists. they are vermin.
& they ought to be treated as vermin
vernichten – could easily be a term found in the patriot acts & this disgusting obscenity that carries bush’s cross
fuck them all

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 17 2006 19:50 utc | 4

After ww2 what parties emerged in Germany and Italy? The Centre party or other parties that had gone along with the fascist and nazi regimes? Nope.
The socialdemocrats and communists who had kept the fight going reestablished their parties. On the right a new coalition formed from church and business: the cristian democrats.
That should be a lesson for the Democratic party. If you go along with the fascists you are going to loose when they do. And if they do not loose, well then you are probably going to loose anyway even if you go along with them. Fascists do not like opposition.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Oct 17 2006 20:13 utc | 5

Arthur Silbur
Our Supreme Leader signed the Military Commissions Act today. Jim Bovard, author of several invaluable books on the Bush administration’s countless crimes […] has labeled this legislation “the torture/dictatorship law.” It is a measure of the impenetrable and forbidding depths to which we have descended that Bovard’s descriptive label is entirely accurate.
Arthur also refers to Goff’s excellent Sowing the Seeds of Fascism in America
How repulsive it feels to live in Bush America.

Posted by: fauxreal | Oct 17 2006 20:28 utc | 6

For many years after the fall of USSR, it has been a common habit of some, notably in the US, to wonder and search who the next “fascists” to fight would be.
Now we know who they are, and where they are.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Oct 17 2006 22:12 utc | 7

Thanks for the Silbur link, faux.

Posted by: beq | Oct 17 2006 22:55 utc | 8

unfortunately, here in france we have the more modish form of fascism in the form of a number of ‘public intellectuals’ – who do a disservice to the public & to intellectuals
from the anti semite drumont in the 19th to michel houlbeq – they ride their merry-go-round of faddish fascism – where they provoke in that petit bourgeois manner that so pleases the media(s)
i know if i had been there & had l f celine been at home i would have happily put a bullet through his sordid head. there is this idea that somehow intellectuals are free of having to carry their responisibility. it is a characteristic of a culture i love so much – that this feature has become detestable for me
in writing a piece of theatre on ‘heydrich/eichmann’ – it was that feature that caused me the greatest fury – the inability of fascists – wherever they are & whenever they are in history – to answer or even speak of their crimes. their silence & duplicity is best exemplified by the monster albert speer who made a career from professional penitence in much the same way as all disgraced republicans explain their corruption or their perversity on alcahol
there was a famous ‘scholar’ of greek poetry of antiquity, robert brassillach who during the occupation – demanded that the germans also “….;take the little ones’, there was rebetat & celine who demanded massacres of jews, of communists, of gypsies & of gaullists, there were the salon antisemites like gide, claudel & their evil comrades in the action français who cultivated their arrogance before the ‘meteques’ – one of the most terrible words in the french language
it is a point of honour that the intellectuals of the left take responsibility for all that they have said & always
perhaps here, the fascists are what they are, cruel caricatures – without any real power or influence – but the fact that they are permitted to speak – rests an offence, for me. my father would have sd the old left slogan – no free speech for the destroyers of free speech
& today in thos united states we are witnessing the criminalisation of free speech in a way not even the most fanatic amongst us could have imagined

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 17 2006 23:01 utc | 9

If you would be willing to kill Celine for his thoughts and words, doesn’t that establish a precedent under which he and his confederates can kill (and thus a fortiori just punish) you for your thoughts and words?

Posted by: lysias | Oct 17 2006 23:10 utc | 10

with celine as with many french & belgian intellectuals it was always a little more than thoughts & words. there is another word in french, that carries with it an odour that stinks to high heaven, ‘delation’ – or informing – giving details of where this or that jewish doctor was living, where this or that enemy was hiding. geore simenon took great pleasure informing on his jewish & resistant neighbours
their words were nearly always followed by acts & to be honest i have never regarded any of them capable of real thought
the crime was not in their heads but on the streets, in torutre rooms, in camps & in ovens
since i was a babe lysias – i have understood class as a central feature of our existence, & that class power is more often than not achieved, necessarily by violence as fanon made clear
what i understand in relation to dr destouches as well as richard cheney or even an o’reilly that you are responsible for what you say, always

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 17 2006 23:22 utc | 11

fauxreal: yes, thanks for the silbur link. Ignatieff uses the ticking clock scenario in his justification for torture. He also claims the Israelis have successfully used torture (if I remember this was his last argument in favour). A funny thing about this claim is that it sits all alone in a heavily footnoted and referenced treatise. We are to take his word for it.
Two more TV shows showcasing torture – ‘Numb3rs’ and something called ‘She Spies’

Posted by: gmac | Oct 18 2006 0:54 utc | 12

A group of “religious leaders” in Connecticut have finally stood up and been counted. There are now said to be billboards in Waterbury and Stratford bearing pictures of a Guantanamo detainee and the words “They voted to allow Torture : Lieberman, Johnson, Simmons, Shays”.
Let’s hope there are more such billboards and more importantly that these people are turned out of the House and the Senate in three weeks’ time.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Oct 18 2006 1:15 utc | 13

Ian Kershaw captures the rise and fall of the masses’ reception of Hitler throughout the rapid erosion of personal-liberties in his monograph The Hitler Myth. In it, he writes:
“Old myths are replaced by new as the combination of modern technology and advanced marketing techniques produce ever more elaborate and sophisticated examples of political image-building around minor personality cults, even in western democracies, aimed at obfuscating reality among the ignorant and gullible. The price for abdicating democratic responsibilities and placing uncritical trust in the “firm leadership” of seemingly well-intentioned political authority was paid dearly by Germans between 1933 and 1945. Even if a collapse into new forms of fascism is inherently unlikely in any western democracy, the massive extension of the power of the modern State over its citizens is in itself more than sufficient cause to develop the highest level possible of educated cynism and critical awareness as the only protection against the marketed images of present-day and future claimants to political “leadership”.
Immediately before that conclusive paragraph, he adds that “it is difficult to see that there could be a resurrection or a new variant of the once-mighty ‘Hitler myth’, with its power to capture the imagination of millions.” As brilliant as his work may be, I think it might need a smidgen of updating, now that permeating stupidity and self-imposed political blindness has invaded the Fourth Reich and its subordinates, the inhabitants of this so-called “blessed” nation.

Posted by: A | Oct 18 2006 3:06 utc | 14

lysias #10: Do you believe that they wait for a precedent to be set?
RG: Trotsky in Mexico wrote an impressive review of Journey into the Night (the review was published in the Atlantic magazine). He astutely noted that such sheer bleakness was not sustainable and that the author would turn to solace either on the left or on the right. I suspect the same of Cormac McCarthy.

Posted by: citizen k | Oct 18 2006 3:26 utc | 15

He also claims the Israelis have successfully used torture (if I remember this was his last argument in favour). A funny thing about this claim is that it sits all alone in a heavily footnoted and referenced treatise.
Uh, Dude…. there is just reams and reams of evidence on this compiled over many years by human rights organizations, so much so that it really doesn’t require a footnote, IMHO.

Posted by: Bea | Oct 18 2006 3:38 utc | 16

Caveat to that last post: I read your comment as questioning whether the Israelis use torture at all. Now that I re-read it, I wonder if you didn’t mean to question its successful use. If so, then I take back my snarky response. Whether torture can ever be successful is certainly a question requiring evidence to back it up.

Posted by: Bea | Oct 18 2006 3:42 utc | 17

Whether torture can ever be successful
depends on your definition of success.
kudos on the post b, as usual, you rock

Posted by: annie | Oct 18 2006 3:46 utc | 18

At the same time that the U.S. govt. has destroyed habeas corpus, on the same day that Ashcroft says that we should all trust Bush to do the right thing, Homeland Security Sec. Chertoff warns the internet may be a breeding ground for terrorists.
Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the Internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat…Chertoff said on Monday.
“We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the Internet,” Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting of International Association of the Chiefs of Police.
“They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination,” Chertoff said. “Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites.”
…To help gather intelligence on possible home-grown attackers, Chertoff said Homeland Security would deploy 20 field agents this fiscal year into “intelligence fusion centers,” where they would work with local police agencies.
wow. I feel so much better knowing that the local police and the Bush junta will be monitoring the internets and keeping those tubes safe for paypal.

Posted by: fauxreal | Oct 18 2006 5:25 utc | 19

I’m disappointed there haven’t been Funerals in cities around the country – Bonfires Burning the Constitution, as this surely does.
If they can deny people, incl. xAm. citizens access to federal courts to litigate their claims, can’t/won’t this principle – called court-stripping or something like that – just be expanded to other areas of law/classes of people? In short, isn’t this just the beginning of a much wider assault?

Posted by: jj | Oct 18 2006 5:58 utc | 20

jj #20 – The new law and mistreatment is very easily extended to illegal Latin American immigrants. There are anywhere between 10 million to 20 million folks on whom this law can be practiced and the fine points honed.
The following item about increased US patrols along the Canadian border gave me a rather uneasy and creepy feeling. It also reminded me of the scene in Heinlein’s SF novel, “Friday,” where Ms. Friday makes a hole in a fortified US-Canada border fence. The guard who could have shot her goes through the hole into Canada as well.
U.S. begins air patrols south of Canadian Prairie border
Security opened its third air surveillance base focused on the Canadian border on Monday …

Posted by: Owl | Oct 18 2006 7:30 utc | 21

So much for the American Revolution … what a quaint little experiment the last couple of centuries have been …
Raw source: The Military Commissions Act of 2006 – PDF

SEC. 7. HABEAS CORPUS MATTERS.
(a) IN GENERAL.—Section 2241 of title 28, United States Code,
is amended by striking both the subsection (e) added by section
1005(e)(1) of Public Law 109–148 (119 Stat. 2742) and the subsection
(e) added by added by section 1405(e)(1) of Public Law
109–163 (119 Stat. 3477) and inserting the following new subsection
(e):
‘‘(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to
hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed
by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who
has been determined by the United States to have been properly
detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.
‘‘(2) Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3) of section
1005(e) of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (10 U.S.C. 801
note), no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear
or consider any other action against the United States or its agents
relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial,
or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained
by the United States and has been determined by the United
States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant
or is awaiting such determination.’’.
(b) EFFECTIVE DATE.—The amendment made by subsection (a)
shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act, and
shall apply to all cases, without exception, pending on or after
the date of the enactment of this Act which relate to any aspect
of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of detention
of an alien detained by the United States since September 11,
2001.

One of the motivations for the American revolution was anger at the injustice of attainder.
-snip-
Within the U.S. Constitution, the clauses forbidding attainder laws serve two purposes. First, they reinforced the separation of powers, by forbidding the legislature to perform judicial functions—since the outcome of any such acts of legislature would of necessity take the form of a bill of attainder. Second, they embody the concept of due process, which was later reinforced by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. The text of the Constitution, Article I, Section 9; Clause 3 is:
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
The constitutions of each and every State within the American Union also expressly forbid bills of attainder. For example, Wisconsin’s constitution Article I, Section 12 reads:
No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, nor any law impairing the obligation of contracts, shall ever be passed, and no conviction shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate.
Contrast this with the subtly more modern variation with the Texas version: Article 1 (Titled Bill of Rights) Section 16, entitled Bills of Attainder; Ex Post Facto or Retroactive Laws: Imparing Obligation of Contracts:
No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, retroactive law, or any law impairing the obligation of contracts, shall be made.
Up until 2002, only five acts of Congress had ever been overturned on bill of attainder grounds.

More explicitly, if the constitution is now no more than a public curiosity in a highly secure display cabinet, what is the basis for ‘The rule of Law’ ? … who’s f__ing law ? The new King George’s ?! Long Live the King !

Article One is the longest of the seven Articles forming the original text of the United States Constitution. Amendments to Article One, unlike amendments to other articles, are explicitly restricted by the Constitution.
-snip-
Section 9: Limits on Congress
The next section of Article One [of the Constitution] provided limits on Congress’s powers:
-snip-
The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.
No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006: A Short Primer
… provisions that attempt to render the Geneva Conventions unenforceable in court, immunize CIA personnel for past abuses [ex post facto], and bar detainees from asserting their right to habeas corpus. Among other things …
Why The Military Commissions Act is No Moderate Compromise

… It immunizes government officials for past war crimes; it cuts the United States off from its obligations under the Geneva Conventions; and it all but eliminates access to civilian courts for non-citizens–including permanent residents whose children are citizens–that the government, in its nearly unreviewable discretion, determines to be unlawful enemy combatants.

Where to now ?

Posted by: Outraged | Oct 18 2006 12:07 utc | 22

Drinks on me for the house, welcome back Outraged!
Turn Yourself In and Get It Over With

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 18 2006 12:20 utc | 23

Drinks on me for the house, welcome back Outraged!
I´ll drink to that! (I´ll have a rum)
Two more TV shows showcasing torture – ‘Numb3rs’ and something called ‘She Spies’
There are also all of those shows with magic forensics sending the message that the police always capture the right guy as long as they can have surveillance everywhere.

Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Oct 18 2006 12:57 utc | 24

Students to wear identifiers

So students at Montgomery County’s largest high school are in an uproar over a new policy that requires them to wear color-coded IDs — black for seniors, white for magnet kids and a particularly loud shade of yellow for students of limited English proficiency.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 18 2006 13:09 utc | 25

2nd that Uncle. Welcome back, Outraged.

Posted by: beq | Oct 18 2006 13:12 utc | 26

so happy to see you, outraged

Posted by: r’giap | Oct 18 2006 13:13 utc | 27

Fox News Guest: Give Guns to Teachers
Something Happening Here – What it is ~~Ain’t~~ is Exactly Clear…
with apologies to Stephen Stills.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 18 2006 13:26 utc | 28

re ‘Turn Yourself In and Get It Over With’
Unfortunately, all the indicators are that the likely outcome of all this may well be us or them (Bushistas) ‘up against the wall’ … either way Uncle, honored to stand with you, in the squad or against the wall …
The sanctity of Life (and that is inclusive of non-US citizens !), human decency, human dignity, true justice … concepts worth defending, no matter what ones individual politics … occassionally I pause and reflect on the barren empty wasteland that should be the public outpouring of protest and rage at what has happened, is happening and likely will happen under these champions of supposed ‘values’, and then I realise I too must return to sleep … ’twas but a dream … Honest public Leadership ?! Integrity ? … *barf!*, not in this ‘reality’ …

Posted by: Outraged | Oct 18 2006 13:37 utc | 29

It is indeed nice to see Outraged back, even if only for a
brief visit. Who can blame him for choosing to “tend his own
garden” in these times?

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Oct 18 2006 14:59 utc | 30

outraged! why so long! are you sticking around awhile? xellent

Posted by: annie | Oct 18 2006 15:17 utc | 31

nice to see you, Outraged. Your moniker is so appropriate.

Posted by: fauxreal | Oct 18 2006 15:20 utc | 32

outraged, let me add my voice to the chorus. bien venidos!

Posted by: conchita | Oct 18 2006 15:38 utc | 33

honored to stand with you, in the squad or against the wall …
having one of those overwhelming mornings, hardly words to comment tho i am sooo here and want to make a reachout to let you know and thank you all. really, am honored now and hope we’re together all the way thru, whatever the consequences.

Posted by: annie | Oct 18 2006 16:06 utc | 34

@ Swedish Death 24
Not to mention the fact that pretty much every murder/procedural flick from Hollywood ends with the suspect being killed before being brought to court. Looks like the nation itself is about to be Dirty Harry-ed (or should that be Harried?)
@ Outraged
Bravo, bravo!

Posted by: Tantalus | Oct 18 2006 16:29 utc | 35

askod@24
Magic forensics? You mean they can’t do all those spiffy things like take a blurry, low res video frame that barely shows the suspects ethnicity and produce a sharp passport quality photo or pour a rubbery compound into a knife wound, let it harden and remove a near perfect cast of the weapon? 😉
There are truthful elements of those shows, but there are many others that are unrealistic plot devices just to further the story, like say torture.
Speaking of forensics, I read a letter today in Maclean’s from a professor regarding 9/11. He was responding to an article that I think made questioning the official version appear loony. He wonders how a 757 that is 155ft L by 125ft W only made a hole 18ft across. The prof made it clear that these questions aren’t just some wild-eyed theory, but a forensic analysis of the available evidence.

Posted by: gmac | Oct 18 2006 21:19 utc | 36

Oscar-Winning Actor Vanessa Redgrave to Present International Human Rights Award to Extraordinary Rendition Survivor Maher Arar
Vanessa Redgrave details the case, legal now in the United States unless and until it is struck down by the Supreme Court, of charges being fabricated out of whole cloth, as Ronald Reagan used to like to say, and of his subsequent imprisonment and torture through the agency of the United States of America.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Oct 19 2006 2:55 utc | 37

They are wasting no time enforcing their filthy act.
Karen Kwiatkowski points our that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Richard Perle could be declared “enemy combatants” and detained and tortured indefinitely if George Bush, or the next potus, could be made to understand that their support for the MEK makes them “terrorist supporters”.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Oct 21 2006 3:52 utc | 38

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