Call Senators TODAY RE: Habeas Corpus

[madame defarge]

Last week Senator Graham introduced a piece of legislation in the Senate, SA 1042, which removed the statutory provision of habeas corpus from federal law. Period. You get a secret military tribunal, and that's it. No appeal, no access to the courts. Nada.

Senator Jeff Bingaman will be introducing an amendment, (S AMEND 2517) to strip that part of the provision from the Graham amendment. That will likely be introduced this morning.

Please read more about this at http://www.democracycellproject.net/blog/archives/2005/11/cornerstones_an.html#comments and call your senators to ask them to support Sen. Bingaman's amendment. This is important to all of us. Please help spread the word. Thanks.

[madame defarge]

1. And please kick/recommend this. It's important! Thx. n/t

[GrpCaptMandrake]

2. Not a joke, just irony

Remember: you can always reach the Senate by dialing (800) SOB USOB. That's the Senate switchboard.

[callady]

3. keep kicked - nominate this folks

[havocmom]

Done, done

and DONE!

[Mass]

4. to call in priority - the 5 dems who voted YES

Conrad
Lieberman
Landrieu
Nelson (NE)
Wyden

[fedupinBushcountry]

7. You beat me to it

:kick:

It is definitely a priority to call these 5.

[madame defarge]

5. Thanks everyone...here's more info

The Guardian has an article about it today... Funny how this gets international press but not US press...

Here are a few snippets from The Guardian...
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1641703,00.html
Human rights campaigners are calling it the 'November surprise' - a last-minute amendment smuggled into a Pentagon finance bill in the US Senate last Thursday.

Its effects are likely to be devastating: the permanent removal of almost all legal rights from 'war on terror' detainees at Guantanamo Bay and every other similar US facility on foreign or American soil.
--snip--
The amendment was tabled by Lindsay Graham, a South Carolina Republican, and passed by 49 votes to 42. It reverses the Supreme Court's decision in June last year which affirmed the right of detainees to bring habeas corpus petitions in American federal courts.

As a result, about 200 of Guantanamo's 500 prisoners have filed such cases, many of them arguing that they are not terrorists, as the US authorities claim, and that the evidence against them is unreliable.

None of them were given any kind of hearing when they were consigned to Guantanamo. Instead, the Americans unilaterally declared they were unlawful 'enemy combatants', mostly on the basis of assessments by junior military intelligence personnel, who were often reliant on interpreters whose skills internal Pentagon reports have criticised.

[HereSince1628]

6. If you email your reps please spell it correctly. nt

[madame defarge]

8. OMG...I'm an idiot...not enuf coffee yet...Fixed header...n/t

[dwahzon]

9. Calling

I already called Lieberman's office on Friday. I was so angry with him for voting for Graham's amendment.

[progressoid]

11. Excellent, and welcome to DU!

[G_j]

10. kick

[Mr_Spock]

12. Shit - Nazi Germany here we come

Damn it - what's up with these fascist Republicans?

[OregonBlue]

13. Called and emailed Wyden. What is he thinking?

He is not representing Oregonians. I'm so upset with him. It's time we got someone new to represent Oregonians. I'm beginning to wonder how he makes his money. What war stocks does he own? What pharmaceutical stocks does he own? (he voted for the drug bill). These incumbents seem to think they cannot lose but they are wrong. Time for new, fresh blood in Oregon.

[realFedUp]

14. kick for this important action

by the time Americans look up the meaning of habeas corpus...
our corpus's will be buried.

[realFedUp]

15. Call your Senators this morning...very important

www.dailykos.com

Please call your Senators and urge them to vote for the Bingaman Amendment regarding habeas corpus at Guantanamo Bay. If you agree, please call your senators, and ask them to vote for Jeff Bingaman's S. AMDT 2517 to bill S. 1042.

Hilzoy and Katherine at Obsidian Wings have a long series explaining why. http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/

I also agree with the New York Times:

It certainly is a relief that the Senate is finally getting around to doing the job it so shamefully refused to do four years ago, after the 9/11 attacks: requiring the administration to follow the law and the Geneva Conventions in dealing with prisoners taken by the military and intelligence operatives.

But what started as an admirable attempt has become a tangle of amendments and back-room deals . . . On Thursday, the Senate passed a measure that would deny foreigners declared to be "unlawful enemy combatants" the right to a hearing under the principle known as habeas corpus, which dates to Magna Carta. Instead, the measure would mandate an automatic review by a federal court of the status of the inmates now at Guantánamo Bay and any future prisoners of that kind. It would exclude coerced confessions from that review, and place important new controls over Guantánamo operations.

These safeguards . . . are long overdue. . . . The Senate should adopt
. . . We'd rather see the Senate delete the suspension of habeas corpus from Mr. Graham's measure now. Some constitutional principles are too important to play around with.

This is precisely what the Bingaman Amendment would do and that is why I strongly urge you to contact your Senators and urge their support for the Bingaman Amendment.

[madame defarge]

16. More info & perspective...

from t r u t h o u t at http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111405Z.shtml

Graham Amendment Invokes Constitutional Crisis

The "accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
--James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 47

Also, these senators are up for re-election in 2006; remind them that grassroots organizations now contribute to other states races, and that if these guys don't shape up, they're out!

Conrad (D-ND)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Nelson (D-NE)

[electropop]

17. Wrote to Warner, Allen, and Reid

"Please preserve Habeas Corpus! Please oppose SA 1042 and support S AMEND 2517."

[Pacifist Patriot]

18. Another source for perspective

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=172885&mesg_id=172885

I called Bill Nelson's and Mel Martinez's offices.

[GOTV]

19. Called DeWine and Voinovich

[radio4progressives]

20. The people to call are the 5 DINOS who voted for Graham: Lieberman et al

This morning, I placed two phone calls to Senator Lieberman's Washington office...

The first call was made to express my outrage that Lieberman was one of the five Democrats who voted in favor of Senator Graham's outrageous amendement after hearing reported this morning on Democracy Now!


then a few minutes ago i called same office, speaking again to another staffer, urging that the Senator vote in favor of the Bingaman amendment which will essentially delete Graham's amendment.

I urge everyone to call all five of these Democrat Senators to right now to make sure that they abide by 800 years of the Magna Carter..
quoting from attorneys Jeremy Hirsh and Timothy Fisher posted on democracynow! headline news editorial referring to Habeas Corpus: "Since the time of the Magna Carta, the rule of law has meant that a person may not be imprisoned without a lawful reason, and now is no time for us to deviate from that rule of law."

go to http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/14/1447232

The five Dems who voted in favor of Graham's outrageous amendement last week were:

Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut,
Mary Landrieu of Louisiana,
Ben Nelson of Nebraska,
Kent Conrad of North Dakota
Ron Wyden of Oregon

While Lieberman and Nelson and Landreiu's were of no surprise to me, I was startled to find Wyden's name on this list. I don't know much about Conrad.

In any event, it's important to call each of these Senators to get them in line with basic Human Rights principles that we as nation like to pride ourselves with.

[radio4progressives]

21. Senator Bingaman is on the floor right now...

very important to listen to...

[jbnow]

22. I am watching the senate debate but

suddenly we are talking about the president's distortions and lies into war and not this amendment.

It is an important topic, but I am baffled. Isn't this time for the amendment?

[radio4progressives]

25. Yes, it from the Bingament introduction to Graham and then on to

Kerry's speech.

now it's some idiot from Tennessee who wanted to change the subject.

[Garbo 2004]

23. Kick. n/t

[callady]

24. You Should put this up in GD forum also

[realFedUp]

26. I haven't been watching Cspan...what's happening with this now?

Thanks for any info. I want to alert others if
this is still in play.

[Boo Boo]

27. Roundhouse..

Kick!

:dem:

[callady]

28. keep kicked - nominate this folks

[realFedUp]

29. I don't know why the seriousness of this isn't resonating more

either in the press or with DUers.

This is basic shit.

[Rodger Dodger]

30. I'll send Senator Graham an e-mail

What he is supporting is dangerous very dangerous to all of us here in the USA.

My two senators, whom I often refer to as dumb & dumber would be useless to call. To write them is a waste of time. Before they open the envelope they must check the zip code in the return address to see if that area voted for or against them.

They aren't voting their constituents they are straight party line voters.

The Democrats must defeat that bill or amend that part out of the bill. It a must for the Dem's.