Senate Votes To Trash The Constitution

Benjamin Franklin once said, "Those who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Those are wise words, and I totally agree with them. Those who are willing to give up their freedoms and rights, things that countless brave Americans have died to protect, simply because our nation faces a threat (even a serious threat) are unworthy of the constitutional protections provided for us by our Founding Fathers.

Our nation continually face threats to its existence, both from outside our borders and within them, and always has. That's just a fact of life. But if fear of those threats was a justifiable reason for giving up any of our constitutional rights, those rights would be gone by now. In the past we have found ways to overcome those threats without giving up our rights or freedom, and that is what we must do now -- because what good is safety without freedom.

However, it seems that a huge majority of the United States Senate no longer believes that. They obviously believe that fear, of terrorism this time, is a good reason to trash the Constitution. A couple of days ago, the Senate passed a new defense bill (SB 1867). The bill authorized a ridiculously high amount of military spending for 2012, but that is a matter for another day. What I want to discuss is another part of that bill. Here's how CBS News describes the really offensive part of SB 1867:

The legislation also would deny suspected terrorists, even U.S. citizens seized within the nation's borders, the right to trial and subject them to indefinite detention.


Let that sink in for a minute. They actually want to allow the government to deny the right of habeas corpus to American citizens. They want to give the government the right to put American citizens in prison for an indefinite (and unlimited) amount of time -- without charges or the right to a trial. And all the government would have to do is to label the citizen as a terrorist (without having to prove that label is true).

If this becomes law, how would we be different from any other police state anywhere in the world? The only thing that has kept our nation from becoming a full-blown police state is the constitutional requirement that the government cannot throw any American citizen into prison without charging them with a crime and then proving those charges in a court of law with a speedy trial. It's called the "rule of law", and it's worked well for us for over 200 years now.

I am not trying to defend terrorism or terrorists. The killing of innocent people for a political or religious purpose is a horrible crime -- whether it is done by those on the left or the right, or whether it is done by muslims or christians (or any other religious group). And when we find a person who has planned or committed an act of terrorism, we should gather the evidence against them and give them a fair trial and a harsh sentence. But to put them in prison without charges or a fair trial is against everything this country stands for.

And don't be misled. These senators will tell you that this is just limited to members of al-Queda (or similar groups), but the truth is that a denial of constitutional rights for any group can easily be extended to cover any other group or individual. This is more than just a "slippery slope", it is an outright denial of constitutional rights. And it leads directly to a police state tyranny.

President Obama has said he would veto the bill. I hope he does, but it would take an enormous amount of political courage -- because he would be accused of being against our troops and being anti-American and harming our national defense (all outrageous lies, but they could still hurt him politically). But even if he did veto it, the law might still be passed, since it has a veto-proof majority in the Senate (and probably the same in the House).

I can't even blame this terrible bill on the Republicans, because 93 senators voted for it. That means a huge majority of BOTH parties have voted to trash the Constitution. Only 7 senators (3 Democrats, 3 Republicans, 1 Independent) voted to protect the rule of law, the Constitution, and the rights of all American citizens. Those senators are:

Sen. Sanders (I-Vermont)
Sen. Harkin (D-Iowa)
Sen. Merkley (D-Oregon)
Sen. Wyden (D-Oregon)
Sen. Paul (R-Kentucky)
Sen. Lee (R-Utah)
Sen. Coburn (R-Oklahoma)