Mother Jones - Comments for "Jose Padilla: Overdue Process"

Ooops... left out critical clause: (I should stop using run-on parentheticals)

We can do all that (examples) AFTER the election, when we've retaken the White House and have increased our majorities in Congress.

WE had a "town meeting" with Rep. Ed. Markey (D-7, Massachusetts) Sunday afternoon in Framingham, Mass.
The topic was to be about impeachment of the Cheney/Bush administration.
What became clear over the 3-hour session, packed to the gills w/ mostly ardent supporters of impeachment, is that the Democrats are soooo concerned with recapturing the White House that they are more than willing to put aside their oaths of office--as Cheney and Bush have theirs-- to let Cheney and Bush escape from office in 2009 with their asses intact.
Virtually every question was answered: We can do all that (impeachment, a new, truly independent 9/11 commission, warrantless eavesdropping, the CIA torture tapes, waste-fraud-and-abuse in military contracting, the $3 Trillion or so that the Pentagon can't find/account for.
However, it will then be too late. Cheney will have sneaked out with his 3 Mosler stand-up safes (with all of the Iraq War plans he and his buddies created in January of 2001, perhaps some planning touching on the execution of the 9/11 attacks).
And Shrub will have shredded whatever documents he can, deep-sixed all of the "off-campus" e-mail, and so on.

So the Demican (as opposed to Republicrat) plan is this: Shrub and Darth get a free pass, because the Demicans do not want to risk waking nasties like Richard Mellen-Scaife, etc.., who might pour a few millions into the Republicrats' campaign efforts.

Markey, for one, did not feel that it was necessary to honor his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. This is an oath he's repeated every two years some 16 times, in his 32 years in the House..

And here I thought that defending the Constitution, the condition precedent to being seated in the House of Rep.s was the very FIRST thing our members of Congress were supposed to be vigilant about. Guess not.

For more on the meeting, go to www.InkyWretch.com

Sounds like the former Soviet Union. KGB anyone?

Its so sad that this is going on in this country. I want to say much more but I won't.

What you write is so true, the people of this country have become " sheeple" they just follow and believe what they are being told, rather then using thier god given brain to thuink things out for themselves.

" naturally the common people do not want war,but after all. it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliment or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice the people can always be bought to the biddings of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the pascifists as for their lack of patriotism and expossing the country to danger. It works the same in every country". Hermann Goering Hitlers Riech Marshall at the Nuremburg trials after WW II.

From what this article states , it sounds like a bunch of Government B.S, as is most of this propaganda on the war on terror. As a criminal justice student and future? lawyer, i would love to see the evidence that the governmemt put forth to back thier claim. To me it seems they went after some low level dirtbag, and frabricated a story, to give their cause justification. If that is true, then our Constitution is in danger, and we sink ever so close to a more Fascist state! I would love to see the governments evidence so I could truly make an objective desicion on this case. Semper Fi, P.S the CONSTITUTION is the law of the land, there will be some interesting Supreme Court cases in the future, as I believe Bush is trying to pack the court, much like what FDR tried in the late 1930"s. Interesting times ahead I feel.

“But what happened with Padilla was unparalleled. There’s never been a detention without charge.”

I see we have forgotten about the WW2 detention camps for Americans who resembled the Japanese...

Ha! Your laws and legal frameworks do not stand up to Bush Co. and Diebold Voting Systems. Good luck with your efforts. We are in big trouble.

When Bush managed to steal the 2000 election through all kinds of intimidation and illegalities, I knew we had suffered a coop against democracy from the inside, so I haven't really been surprised at anything this administration has done. I will actually be surprised if thousands of innocent political prisoners are NOT taken now before the next presidential 'election' to insure that this group behind bush continues to hold onto power. I am afraid to do very much myself - I am a coward - I am truly in awe of the people who are fighting 'the good fight' here in America, still. Iraq - that is just a ploy to deplete America's armed forces and bankrupt this country - we see now proof that Cheney knew it was a quagmire and state so only a few years before coming to power.
Best wishes and peace to you all.

What's the problem? I assumed an emperor could do as they pleased!

I wish Donna Newman luck and I hope that Jose Padilla can recover some of his life. They are up against the biggest terrorists in the world today, the US Administration... opps... I guess I have just committed an offense. The current attitude is if you are not for them, they are against you. If you disagree with them, then you must be a threat...in fact, a terrorist! I really hope that what goes around comes around somehow. God works in mysterious ways and life has a funny way of turning the tables. The people complicit in taking away liberties of Americans (and other nationalities), torturing and tormenting them while justifyiing their sadistic actions with hystrionic charges are cunning, sly, calculating, shameless and without conscience... just the sort of people the founders of the United States were trying to escape from!

To those who post in favor of the neocons; democracy, civil liberties, and freedom are fragile. Sounds like somebody drank the Jonestown punch and are hallucinating through fear being pushed like a drug by this administration. The bottom line is that NOBODY, including your dear President Bush is above the Constitution. Even Guiliani says he's a strict constructionist. You, Bush, or the other Princes CAN'T have it both ways. Either we protect civil liberties and let juries made their mark, or we believe all that the neocons say and we float into a dictatorship; after all that's why they are called the Right. Power is their quest and they are willing to grasp the rights of all of us on their way. Padilla is just one example. The abuses are so many that the forest v. trees metaphor becomes the best way to explain yours, and the American people's Attention Deficit. Step back, take a deep breath, and think critically about how the neocons have hijacked the country. People have alluded to the neocons as "conservative". They are not conservative. They have grown government, spent, spent, and spent more. Its out of control.

Was Clinton and the left wing intelligensia correct all the time. No, for heaven's sake, but Executive privilege means something new with this administration. When the smoke clears on this Machiavellian experience in our country, Cheney and Rove are the Princes, there will be a reform period unrivaled in our history.

All of these comments are coming from a "Recovering Republican". The assault on our law, our Constitution, has to end. We've gone nearly too far now and it will take generations to restore Constitutional law in this country once this bunch is OUT. You don't crush out dissent because there may just be some merit to their arguments, unless you continue to drink the Punch.

God Bless Us All.

"From the President - There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit,.... who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life.... Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. The Espionage Act pushed through by a cooperative congress, balked only at legalizing outright press censorship, despite the President calling this issue "an imperative necessity." The Postmaster General was given the right to refuse to deliver any periodical he deemed unpatriotic or critical of the administration. Soon the post office stopped delivery of virtually all publications and any foreign-language publication that hinted at less-than-enthusiastic support of the war. The Librarian of Congress was required to report the names of those who had asked for certain books and it also explained that the government needed to monitor "the individual casual or impulsive disloyal utterances." The law was pushed to be broad enough to punish statements made "from good motives or... [If] traitorous motives weren't provable." It became punishable by twenty years in jail to “utter print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the government of the United States.” One could go to jail for cursing the government or criticizing it, even if what one said was true. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the Supreme Court opinion that found the act constitutional-arguing that the First Amendment did not protect speech if “the words used… create a clear and present danger.”"
These were some of the laws and efforts initiated by President Woodrow Wilson to conduct WW I.
Either I was not paying attention, very likely, or this was never covered or such is the History as we know it as presented by Schlesinger’s history and the generations of historians he mentored. And I might the minimal minds writing and those accessing the typical MJ post...
Since Clinton’s reign, the Saddam has WMD, was the perpetual mantra and the Clinton administration even initiated the goal/policy to remove Saddam for having such abilities and finally Bush and the not talking anymore and getting it done Conservatives did. But if your war with is with Bush and not those that did attack America, the Jihadist everywhere and anywhere, then one would be as inclined to the minimal rational displayed by these post and MJ articles.

Where is the dirty bomb? Prove that part. The paper to sign up for a nebulous Islamic project is not evidence for life inprisonment.