Say Anything Blog

That’s what my friend Bart Hinkle believes:

...the ACLU is not out of bounds to call itself in a recent ad “the most conservative organization in America” for opposing the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

That act, so eagerly sought by the Bush administration, weakens the constitutional guarantee of habeas corpus—a right whose recognition in common law goes back to before the Magna Carta of 1215. The ease with which some Republicans have been willing to cast aside almost eight centuries of legal tradition can be called many things, but it cannot be called “conservative.”

I’m not sure I could disagree more with Mr. Hinkle.

While it is undoubtedly true that a guarantee of habeas corpus has been a founding principle of both this country’s laws and the English common law the framework of our legal system is based on, what is not true are these things:

1. That the Military Commissions Act “weakens” the constitutional guarantee of of habeas corpus.  I’d point out that the MCA, in section 7, states the following: No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.”  Clearly this does not do anything weaken the constitutional guarantee of habeas corpus for U.S. citizens, who are the only people afforded the protections of the constitution.
2. There is absolutely no tradition of extending constitutional protections, specifically habeas corpus relief, to war detainees.  America has never, ever done that in any of the wars or conflicts we’ve fought in the past.

To put it bluntly, all supporters of the Military Commissions Act want is for the detainees in the war on terror to be treated as though they were detainees of any other war we’ve ever thought.