Bush suggests ripping up the constitution.

Bush has given his administration's response to a June 29 Supreme Court decision, which concluded the Pentagon could not prosecute military detainees using secret tribunals, after the Supreme Court ruled that secret tribunals were a violation of the detainees rights under the Geneva Conventions.

U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill.

According to the draft, the military would be allowed to detain all "enemy combatants" until hostilities cease. The bill defines enemy combatants as anyone "engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners who has committed an act that violates the law of war and this statute."

Legal experts said Friday that such language is dangerously broad and could authorize the military to detain indefinitely U.S. citizens who had only tenuous ties to terror networks like al Qaeda.

"That's the big question ... the definition of who can be detained," said Martin Lederman, a law professor at Georgetown University who posted a copy of the bill to a Web blog.

Scott L. Silliman, a retired Air Force Judge Advocate, said the broad definition of enemy combatants is alarming because a U.S. citizen loosely suspected of terror ties would lose access to a civilian court — and all the rights that come with it. Administration officials have said they want to establish a secret court to try enemy combatants that factor in realities of the battlefield and would protect classified information.

The administration's proposal, as considered at one point during discussions, would toss out several legal rights common in civilian and military courts, including barring hearsay evidence, guaranteeing "speedy trials" and granting a defendant access to evidence. The proposal also would allow defendants to be barred from their own trial and likely allow the submission of coerced testimony.

One can always rely on this band of thugs to produce legislation that takes your breath away.

If they get this passed the US should simply rip up their Constitution as it would be essentially meaningless.

This legislation would allow the US executive to arrest any of it's citizens, claiming that they represent a terrorist threat - whilst being under no obligation to provide any proof or evidence - and hold that citizen indefinitely without charging them.

Now we all know from Guantanamo that this lot never, ever, make mistakes or ever arrest the wrong people. That's why they actually charge so very few of "the worst of the worst".

It'll be interesting to see if the usual rightwing cheerleaders for the Bush crime family support this draconian measure now that they are potentially under it's remit rather than simply Muslims, who all right wingers know are terrorists. It's the logic of Ann Coulter, that source of bile and venom, who once memorably said, "Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims."

This will be news to Gerry Adams, but it's typical of the stupidity of certain sections of the Republican base.

It'll be fascinating to see how many Republicans are keen to give their government this amount of unbridled power. If they do, then they can no longer even claim to be conservatives anymore, as conservatives have always supposedly been very keen to limit the amount of power the executive has over it's electorate.

I've always believed that certain people supported this legislation only because they never believed that it would ever apply to them.

It's a subtle form of racism of which Coulter is merely the most vocal exponent. Some more examples of Coulter's rampant racism:

"The White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president."

• Republicans, Bloggers and Gays, Oh My!; February 23, 2005.

"I think our motto should be, post-9-11, 'raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.'"

• At CPAC Conference; February 10, 2006.

"They're never very high in anyone's caste system, are they? Poor little Pakis."

• [6]; August 16, 2004.
• Expatriate Pakistanis

"Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of 'kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed')".

• From her column; March 4, 2004.

"When we were fighting communism, OK, they had mass murderers and gulags, but they were white men and they were sane. Now we're up against absolutely insane savages."

• [5]; August 16, 2004.
• War on Terror v. Cold War

Will they all be so keen now that Whitey's involved?

Tags: Bush, Constitution, new legislation, war on terror, habeus corpus,