- Unless November's new blood improves the Democratic Party's
civil liberties pedigree, the Democrats will have failed even before they
are sworn in next January.
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- In its disregard for truth, public opinion, the separation
of powers, the Geneva Conventions, the US Constitution and statutory law,
the Bush administration has been more of a regime than an administration.
The Bush/Cheney executive branch has operated independently of all the
constraints that provide accountability and prevent despotism.
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- The Bush regime was able to evade these restraints, because
Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and because Republicans
wielded 9/11 as a weapon to forestall political opposition.
-
- With signing statements and other unilateral declarations
of presidential authority, the Bush regime asserted executive branch powers
beyond the reach of Congress and the judiciary.
-
- The Bush regime was a coup d'etat against the Bill of
Rights and the jurisdictions of Congress and the courts. Unless Democrats
roll back this coup, Americans have seen the last of their civil liberties.
-
- Judging by Democrats' statements in the flush of their
electoral victory, Democrats have little, if any, awareness of this critical
fact. Democrats are anxious to get on with their agendas and have shown
no recognition that the first order of business is to repeal the legislation
that permits torture, warrantless detention and domestic spying.
-
- If Bush threatens to veto the resurrection of US civil
liberty, the Democrats can impeach Bush as a tyrant as well as for pushing
America into an illegal and catastrophic war on the basis of lies and deception.
-
- Bush is the most impeachable president in American history.
However, the incoming Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has declared
impeachment to be "off the table." Obviously, this means that
Bush will not be held accountable and that the Bill of Rights is a casualty
of the vague, undefined, and propagandistic "war on terror."
-
- Do Pelosi and the incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid have the intellect and character to deliver the leadership required
for Americans to remain a free people? Instead of bemoaning the damage
Bush has done to civil liberty, Democrats are up in arms over one child
in five being raised in poverty. The more important question is whether
children are being raised as a free people protected by civil liberties
from arbitrary government power.
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- Do Democrats share the delusion of Bush supporters that
it is only Middle Eastern terrorists who are deprived of the protection
of the US Constitution? One can understand the reluctance of Americans
to extend constitutional protection to terrorists who are trying to kill
Americans. However, without these protections, there is no way of ascertaining
who is a terrorist.
-
- Currently, a "terrorist" is anyone given that
designation by any of a large number of unaccountable government officials
and military officers. No evidence has to be provided in order to detain
a designated suspect. Moreover, designated suspects can be convicted in
military tribunals on the basis of secret evidence not made available to
them or to any legal representation that they might be able to secure.
In other words, you are guilty if charged.
-
- As the case of US citizen Jose Padilla makes clear, these
gestapo police state proceedings apply to Americans. Padilla was declared
to be an "enemy combatant." He was held in a US prison for three
and one-half years with no charges and no warrant. He was kept in isolated
confinement, tortured, and denied legal representation.
-
- In order to avoid US Supreme Court jurisdiction over
the case, the Bush regime filed charges after stealing three and one-half
years of Padilla's life. However, the charges have no relationship to the
Bush regime's original allegations that Padilla, an Hispanic-American,
was an al Qaeda operative who was going to set off a radioactive dirty
bomb in an American city. The US government no longer designates Padilla
as an "enemy combatant." The dirty bomb charge has disappeared,
and US Federal District Judge Marcia Cooke has criticized the government's
indictment as vague with sketchy evidence "weak on facts."
-
- The reason that the Bush regime wants to detain people
indefinitely without evidence is that it has no evidence. The reason the
Bush regime passed torture legislation is in order to produce the missing
evidence by torturing a suspect into self-incrimination. "Evidence"
procured by torture has been illegal in civilized societies for centuries.
But the Bush regime has resurrected the medieval rack and substituted it
for the Bill of Rights.
-
- If Democrats cannot bring themselves to rectify the inhumane
and barbaric practices that now pass for US justice, then they, too, have
failed the American people.
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- Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate
Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor
of National Review. He is author or coauthor of eight books, including
The Supply-Side Revolutin (Harvard University Press). He has held numerous
academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political
Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University
and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He
has contributed to numerous scholar journals and testified before Congress
on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious Service
Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal
of Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell. He can be reached at:
paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com.
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