One of the many bills rushed through the House last week was the Military Commissions Act of 2006. This bill, which Randy Kuhl wholeheartedly supports, received a lot of attention from the media because of the showdown between John McCain and the White House over the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. Lost in the noise was the equally important suspension of habeas corpus contained in the bill.
Kuhl's spin on the bill is that it would let us "prosecute terrorists". The question that we need to ask him is: who's a terrorist?
The answer is that a terrorist, a.k.a. "enemy combatant", is a foreign national or US Citizen who the President deems dangerous to the country. Once a person is named an enemy combatant, they are offered a very limited set of options for appeal of that designation. Specifically, the right to challenge one's detention in open court (habeas corpus) is suspended.
Habeas corpus is a fundamental right enumerated in the Constitution:
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it. (Art 1, Sec 9)
Since the War on Terror is not a "Case of Rebellion or Invasion", a law that suspends habeas corpus is unconstitutional. Arlen Specter, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, believes that it is, as do a number of legal scholars.
Legislators only pass obviously unconstitutional bills for political reasons. In this case, Republicans were afraid of appearing "soft on terror" and instead chose to pass a bill that they knew would immediately end up in court.
I have no issue with letting the President designate enemy combatants and lock them up. It's a legitimate tool of war. But when one man has the right to single out a citizen of the US as a terrorist, and that citizen doesn't have the right to challenge his detention in court, we've weakened, not strengthened, our laws and our nation.
Weren't Republicans once the party that defended basic liberties against the big-government Democrats? I guess those days are gone, and John R "Randy" Kuhl is a little part of the reason why.