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DameRight...You must now be careful about your thought crimes. Canada may well follow the lead of the US and other fascist nations that got so scared after 9/11 that they gave up on freedom and rights.

The US Is No Longer the Land of the Free
By Jonathan Turley, Published: January 14
(Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.)

Below is today's column in the Sunday Washington Post. The column addresses how the continued rollbacks on civil liberties in the United States conflicts with the view of the country as the land of the free. If we are going to adopt Chinese legal principles, we should at least have the integrity to adopt one Chinese proverb: "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names."
We seem as a country to be in denial as to the implications of these laws and policies. Whether we are viewed as a free country with authoritarian inclinations or an authoritarian nation with free aspirations (or some other hybrid definition), we are clearly not what we once were.


Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.

These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens — precisely the problem with the new laws in this country.

The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.

Assassination of U.S. Citizens
President Obama has claimed, as President George W. Bush did before him, the right to order the killing of any citizen considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism....
Nations such as Nigeria, Iran and Syria have been routinely criticized for extrajudicial killings of enemies of the state.

Indefinite Detention
Under the law signed last month, terrorism suspects are to be held by the military; the president also has the authority to indefinitely detain citizens accused of terrorism...
China recently codified a more limited detention law for its citizens, while countries such as Cambodia have been singled out by the United States for "prolonged detention."

Arbitrary Justice
The president now decides whether a person will receive a trial in the federal courts or in a military tribunal, a system that has been ridiculed around the world for lacking basic due process protections...
Egypt and China have been denounced for maintaining separate military justice systems for selected defendants, including civilians.

Warrantless Searches
The president may now order warrantless surveillance, including a new capability to force companies and organizations to turn over information on citizens' finances, communications and associations...
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan operate under laws that allow the government to engage in widespread discretionary surveillance.

Secret Evidence
The government now routinely uses secret evidence to detain individuals and employs secret evidence in federal and military courts...

War Crimes
The world clamored for prosecutions of those responsible for waterboarding terrorism suspects during the Bush administration, but the Obama administration said in 2009 that it would not allow CIA employees to be investigated or prosecuted for such actions. This gutted not just treaty obligations but also the Nuremberg principles of international law. When courts in countries such as Spain moved to investigate Bush officials for war crimes, the Obama administration reportedly urged foreign officials not to allow such cases to proceed, despite the fact that the United States has long claimed the same authority with regard to alleged war criminals in other countries.
Various nations have resisted investigations of officials accused of war crimes and torture. Some, such as Serbia and Chile, eventually relented to comply with international law; countries (other than the USA) that have denied independent investigations include Iran, Syria and China.

Secret Court
The government has increased its use of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has expanded its secret warrants to include individuals deemed to be aiding or abetting hostile foreign governments or organizations...
Pakistan places national security surveillance under the unchecked powers of the military or intelligence services.

Immunity From Judicial Review
Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has successfully pushed for immunity for companies that assist in warrantless surveillance of citizens, blocking the ability of citizens to challenge the violation of privacy.
Similarly, China has maintained sweeping immunity claims both inside and outside the country and routinely blocks lawsuits against private companies.

Continual Monitoring of Citizens
The Obama administration has successfully defended its claim that it can use GPS devices to monitor every move of targeted citizens without securing any court order or review. It is not defending the power before the Supreme Court - a power described by Justice Anthony Kennedy as "Orwellian."
Saudi Arabia has installed massive public surveillance systems, while Cuba is notorious for active monitoring of selected citizens.

Extraordinary Renditions
The government now has the ability to transfer both citizens and noncitizens to another country under a system known as extraordinary rendition, which has been denounced as using other countries, such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, to torture suspects.

President Obama has claimed, as President George W. Bush did before him, the right to order the killing of any citizen considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism....

Under the law signed last month, terrorism suspects are to be held by the military; the president also has the authority to indefinitely detain citizens accused of terrorism

The president now decides whether a person will receive a trial in the federal courts or in a military tribunal, a system that has been ridiculed around the world for lacking basic due process protections

The president may now order warrantless surveillance

The government now routinely uses secret evidence to detain individuals and employs secret evidence in federal and military courts

The world clamored for prosecutions of those responsible for waterboarding terrorism suspects during the Bush administration

I could cite at least one Supreme Court decision from the 1950's that upheld the government's right not to disclose the sources of its evidence against a defendant. The rules of evidence which now apply to military tribunals are not much different from the ones which apply in a federal court.

The only law which applied to the CIA interrogators who put three very important Al Qaeda jihadists on the waterboard in 2002-2003 is section 2340A of the U.S. Code, a 1994 statute which codifies the terms of a treaty the U.S. agreed to and makes torture a crime.

The real shame is that after having gotten all the information these men had, the U.S. didn't quickly try and convict them in a military tribunal, and then hang them for the world to see. In the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, whose guilt for the murders of more than 3,000 innocent people is beyond any reasonable doubt... we shouldn't have bothered with the trial. Straight to He!!--if the Devil would have him.

…we shouldn't have bothered with the trial. Straight to He!!--if the Devil would have him.

I may respond to the rest of this later, if I find the time.

Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world.
Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian.

Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right.

Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/287-124/9448-the-us-is-no-longer-the-land-of-the-free

In other words BOTH the military tribunals and regular federal courts are just kangaroo courts to allow government lynchings of it's perceived enemies, right?

You mean torture is a crime in the US??? The heII you say!

Were the CIA guys ever prosecuted under that law

Yeah, evidence obtained under torture is TOTALLY admissable in court.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's confession was obtained after months of unendurable torture, so he must have been totally guilty, right?

The concepts of due process & justice are apparently totally alien to you.

your usual limp justifications, general dismissals, and vague non-sequiturs

Rather amusingly, by taking the issues one by one, you missed the point in exactly the way the author of ths article suggested is indicative of, by implication potentially dangerous, blindness.

In responding to some of the issues with your usual limp justifications, general dismissals, and vague non-sequiturs, you miss the actual point of the article entirely, even though I highlighted the central ideas for your convenience.

Rather amusingly, by taking the issues one by one, you missed the point in exactly the way the author of this article suggested is indicative of, by implication potentially dangerous, blindness.

I'm just not persuaded by your author's argument that "they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian."

...it's interesting that you couldn't refute any of it.

Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world.
Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian.

Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right.

Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/287-124/9448-the-us-is-no-longer-the-land-of-the-free

My mother still works as a crossing guard (she's 75), and the day of the attacks, she saw when the second plane hit. On the corner that she crosses children, was an Arab deli. When all hell broke loose that day, and it was known who was behind the attacks, a lady that helped run the deli came out and began dancing in the street. No need to tell you that someone grabbed a hold of her and gave her a beating.
I never found out what happened after that to that woman, but the owners no longer run that deli. However, I do wonder now had this law been enacted then, would she been picked up and detained just because she was dancing?

Years ago, police were more like social workers, there to keep the peace.

There was a story about an Iraqi girl, 13 years old, that wrote a school paper that said she didn't AGREE with what the 9/11 terrorists did, but that she UNDERSTOOD why they may have felt so desperate to pull such an act.
Her teacher notified the principal, who notified the FBI, who fell on her family like one of the twin towers. Their immigration was delayed until they realized that her little brother was a natural born citizen.
The family was split up. Mom returned to Iraq with the girl, Dad stayed here with his son.
One thing i noticed in the story, was that no one answered the little girl's question, when she asked "I thought everyone had freedom of speech in this country.."

legal experts at the Justice Dept. had advised them that the interrogation techniques they were to use were not torture under U.S. law.

Evidently you don't know that neither 5th Amendment due process nor any other part of the Constitution applies to aliens outside the U.S.

The purpose of criminal trials is to determine guilt.

maybe you're still mourning that Bin Laden didn't get a trial before being killed.

This Arab, in our country, was celebrating the deaths of hundreds of persons and the devastation of buildings and aircrafts costing America billions of dollars.
A beating was not enough; she should have been "danced" into the flames.

most non-fascist rational minds consider waterboarding to be torture.

Oh yeah; I forgot that it isn't torture if some dolt at the Whitehouse and/or justice department says it isn't.

That is why so-called illegal aliens can't be prosecuted under US law.

I ALWAYS considered it criminal that Bin Laden was being hunted down like a murderer for 911

I guess Cheney & his PNAC cohorts were deathly afraid of what he might say if it ever did go to trial, so the agenda was always to murder him to keep his mouth shut.

Jay Bybee is such a dolt that he's an appeals court judge in California. John Yoo is such a dolt that UC Berkeley Law School hired him to teach there. How could anyone doubt that *you* know better about a complex issue of law? I would bet a lot of money that you've never even glanced at any of the memos analyzing this issue.

So, how come you never stop berating the legal system when you disagree with the decisions, especially those related to the civil rights of minorities, not to mention the Boumedienne case decided by the Supreme Court. How come the members of the Supreme Court are wrong in your opinion? Is it because they political appointees?

So, because the people you mention here are in the legal profession they can't be wrong.