The Peoples' Habeas Corpus

Slightly spooky fact...

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 14:44:26 GMT

This post earned my LJ two online visits from DHS within ten minutes of one another yesterday.

A quick bit of background. I use LJ-Toys to count hits to my journal. I don't hide that fact. If you read either my profile or my journal you will see the memes, as the author refers to them, openly displayed on both. But if you go directly to one of my entries without going through the journal, you will not see that meme. DHS went directly to the above post. No prior read of anything else related to my journal. Obviously, I triggered one of their keyword searches.

So if I suddenly disappear, someone please call DHS and ask about me.

What are we gonna do now?

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 13:31:02 GMT

Poll: Most feel civil liberties not harmed by war on terror.

We have our work cut out for us, people.

You too can be an enemy combatant

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 17:23:35 GMT

Americans may be held as 'enemy combatants,' appeals court rules
Government welcomes ruling upholding presidential power

A federal appeals court Wednesday ruled President Bush has the authority to designate U.S. citizens as "enemy combatants" and detain them in military custody if they are deemed a threat to national security.

"Judicial review does not disappear during wartime but the review of battlefield captures in overseas conflicts is a highly deferential one," said the opinion of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The ruling reverses a lower court decision ordering the government to produce more information to defend its holding of Yaser Hamdi, a U.S. citizen accused of fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and dismisses the complaint of his attorneys.

The appeals court ruling was immediately hailed by the government.

"I applaud today's decision, which reaffirms the president's authority to capture and detain individuals such as Hamdi who join our enemies on the battlefield to fight against America and its allies," said Attorney General John Ashcroft. "Today's ruling is an important victory for the president's ability to protect the American people in times of war."

Hamdi, who was born in Louisiana but grew up in Saudi Arabia, is being held in a Navy brig in Norfolk, Virginia, after being captured in Afghanistan.

He has not been allowed visits by the federal public defender who represents him, and the government has given no indication if or when it may file charges against him.

Through a series of court proceedings, Hamdi defense counsel Frank Dunham has argued his client's constitutional rights were being violated. Although a lower court agreed, the three-member appeals panel unanimously rejected the arguments.

"The events of September 11th have left their indelible mark," the court said in explaining its decision to defer to executive authority. "It is not wrong even in the dry annals of judicial opinion to mourn those who lost their lives that terrible day. Yet we speak in the end not from anger or sorrow but from the conviction that separation of powers takes on special significance when the nation itself comes under attack."

"Hamdi's status as a citizen, as important as that is, cannot displace our constitutional order or the place of the courts within the Framer's scheme," the opinion said.

The federal appeals court in Richmond is widely viewed as among the most conservative in the nation, and has generally supported the government's lawyers during a series of disputes in the Hamdi case.

The ruling Wednesday was issued by Circuit Court Judges J. Harvie Wilkinson III, and William Wilkins, both appointed by President Ronald Reagan, and Judge William Traxler Jr., who was appointed by President Bill Clinton.

In this third appeal by the government in the Hamdi case, the Circuit Court again overturned U.S. District Court Judge Robert Doumar, a Reagan appointee.

In the latest appeal, the United States had asked the Circuit Court to overturn Doumar's order requiring the production of various materials regarding Hamdi's status as an alleged enemy combatant. The lower court questioned whether a declaration by a Defense Department official setting forth what the government contends were the circumstances of Hamdi's capture was sufficient by itself to justify his continued detention.

The appeals panel said it was.

"Because it is undisputed that Hamdi was captured in a zone of active combat in a foreign theater of conflict, we hold that the submitted declaration is a sufficient basis upon which to conclude that the commander-in-chief has constitutionally detained Hamdi pursuant to the war powers entrusted to him by the United States Constitution," the Appeals Court said. "No further factual inquiry is necessary or proper, and we remand the case with direction to dismiss the petition."

Court does not address Padilla case

The court did not address the issue presented in a separate case involving another enemy combatant, that of accused "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla. (More on Padilla case)

"We have no occasion, for example, to address the designation as an enemy combatant of an American citizen captured on American soil or the role that counsel might play in such a proceeding. See, e.g., Padilla v. Bush," the opinion read.

"We shall, in fact, go no further in this case than the specific context before us -- that of the undisputed detention of a citizen during a combat operation undertaken in a foreign country and a determination by the executive that the citizen was allied with enemy forces."

Ashcroft has alleged that Padilla, 31, who was detained last May after arriving at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport from overseas, was part of a scheme by al Qaeda to explode a conventional bomb laced with radioactive material, possibly in Washington, D.C.

After Padilla had been detained for a month as a material witness in a federal facility in New York City, President Bush declared him an enemy combatant and he was transferred to a Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina.

His attorneys have argued that he ought to be returned to New York and that the government should be forced to comply with standard criminal court procedures, including letting him speak to his attorneys.

As has been said before: You too can be an enemy combatant. This is from a 2003 ruling, even before the death of Habeas Corpus.

Thanks to starcat_jewel for the link. x-posted to my journal.

Yes, I'm back

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 15:01:31 GMT

Which means it must be time to actually start talking about the original purpose of this community. As I see it, we have several challenges.

First and foremost, achieving a critical mass. Half a dozen people aren't going to make much noise.
The next big thing is: How will we know when one of us, or those we care about, has gone missing?
Where do we go to make our noise?

OK, that's enough for a start.

It has begun

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 14:19:10 GMT

Terror law stymies detainee cases

Hours after President Bush signed a tough anti-terrorism law, government lawyers began putting detainees on notice that the U.S. court system no longer was open to them.

Now it is up to a federal appeals court, and ultimately the Supreme Court, to decide the fate of hundreds of people who have spent years arguing the government is holding them illegally.

Such challenges normally go before federal judges. But the new law, which Bush said was necessary to fight terrorism, strips the court of any authority to hear such cases.

Under the law signed Tuesday, the military now has discretion to decide whether to charge enemy combatants before military commissions or indefinitely hold the detainees.

The Justice Department filed notices with several federal judges Wednesday, telling them the law renders their detainee cases moot.

The judges probably will not rule on that issue, however, until an appeals court decides how it is going to handle the law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which was considering two detainee cases, ordered lawyers to make their case for what should happen next.

"What's being blocked and what the government is opposing tooth and nail is the most simple thing of all: a hearing before a district court judge," said Jonathan Hafetz, who handles many detainee cases for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. "The government will do anything to prevent Guantanamo detainees from being able to present evidence in court."

Bush evoked the memory of the victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks when he signed the bill. He said the law allows the nation to bring to trial such detainees as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged would-be hijacker from the 2001 strikes.

The law was passed in response to a Supreme Court ruling in June that the Bush administration's original plan for military tribunals violated U.S. and international law.

"The judiciary has provided guidance and the president acted on it with bipartisan support," said Glenn Sulmasy, a law professor at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and an early supporter of creating new courts to try suspected terrorists.

"It will be difficult for the court to attack what's going on and intervene in what's really warfare. It would be a broad step by the judicial branch," Sulmasy said.

The three-member appeals court ordered a month of briefs on the law, which means a ruling will not come before late November or December, well after the Nov. 7 elections.

The New America

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 13:49:59 GMT

So how's everyone doing under the new America? Everyone happy being beholden to your own government?

A letter to Olbermann and Countdown

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 13:41:54 GMT

Some of us did not yawn this past 17-Oct-06. Some of us are painfully aware of the nearness to Hitler's Germany we are approaching. A few of us are trying to do something, even if it is only defensive. People like you, Mr. Olbermann, are essentially safe from being declared "unlawful enemy combatant" by virtue of your fame and outspoken criticism of Mr. Bush. The ordinary folk who believe as you do are not so much so.

Therefore: in self-defense, I proposed this:

Maybe we should consider creating some sort of network of people who will promise to ask questions if one of the network drops out of sight. Get loud. Make noise. Maybe save someone's life.

A Peoples' Habeas Corpus, so to speak.

It's not much, but it is something. We've created an online community to discuss how we can make this a reality. http://community.livejournal.com/peoples_habeas/profile

Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. It applies equally to the death of that Grand Experiment we called Democracy.