My America use to have the moral high ground. My America use to be a democracy. My America use to believe in freedom, including the freedom to dissent. I'm as WASP as one can be, so I may never be hauled away to some undisclosed location indefinitely, I may never be stopped merely for being in the "wrong" neighborhood, I may never be subjected to scrutiny merely for the color of my skin. But that doesn't make me OK with what BushCo is attempting. Some things are wrong. Always.
Amanda Marcotte has this at Pandagon:
How long before they start seeking to classify people as “unlawful combatants” who dissent against their ideology because we are loyal to America and we hate to see BushCo ripping up our Constitution and laying waste to our democratic values?
Well, it appears they’ve allowed themselves up to that possibility, according to the Washington Post.
As a result, human rights experts expressed concern yesterday that the language in the new provision would be a precedent-setting congressional endorsement for the indefinite detention of anyone who, as the bill states, “has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States” or its military allies.
The definition applies to foreigners living inside or outside the United States and does not rule out the possibility of designating a U.S. citizen as an unlawful combatant. It is broader than that in last week’s version of the bill, which resulted from lengthy, closed-door negotiations between senior administration officials and dissident Republican senators. That version incorporated a definition backed by the Senate dissidents: those “engaged in hostilities against the United States.”
Read the whole thing. Then weep for the America BushCo is killing slowly.
Shame on any elected official who supports this, no matter what their party affiliation.
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