The Day Habeas Corpus Died

When the rule of law no longer applies, the rule of men takes over. That's what happened on December 15, 2011 when the U.S. Senate passed a defense reauthorization bill that would allow the military to detain and incarcerate indefinitely without trial or charge American citizens as terrorism suspects, even when arrested on U.S. soil.

Barack Obama pledged as a candidate for the presidency to close down Guantanamo Bay as a holding facility for enemy combatants captured on foreign battlefields. But now he supports the legislation which he is poised to sign into a law that will give him the absolute power to incarcerate Americans in that dreaded facility for indefinite detainment.

The action would be the most stark repudiation of the constitutional guarantee of the right to habeas corpus since Abraham Lincoln suspended it during the War Between the States.

It would also violate the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the Army from being used as a domestic national law enforcement authority.

This draconian legislation is a bipartisan betrayal of the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law and the common-sense, the very limited-government ideals upon which the country was founded.

There are laws on the books right now that characterize who might be a potential terrorist including anyone who has more than seven days of food in their house. So if someday you receive the midnight knock on your door and you are shipped off to Guantanamo Bay, you may take comfort in knowing that your fate is in the hands of one man -- Barack Obama. And he and he alone, under the new law, would hold the power to set you free.

NOTE: This videtorial was based on a December 15, 2011 WND editorial by Joseph Farah, founder of WND.com

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[MrGreenPoop1000]

It is a fact that the clause of habeas corpus is located in “Article I, which sets forth the powers of Congress, and not in Article II, which concerns the Executive,” (Jaffa 364). And while the President is not a member of the legislative branch, Harry V. Jaffa, professor and author of the University of Chicago, claims that “where in the Constitution it [habeas corpus] is placed is wholly subordinate to why it is there at all. Lincoln’s suspension of the writ is therefore lawful,” (Jaffa 364).

[detached]

@ArizonaSean

Great point. We've unlawfully detained our citizens before. Why are people so skeptical that it could happen again?

[ArizonaSean]

From Wikipedia:

President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment with Executive Order 9066, issued February 19, 1942, which allowed local military commanders to designate "military areas" as "exclusion zones," from which "any or all persons may be excluded." This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and most of Oregon and Washington, except for those in internment camps.