magna_carta.jpgThe Senate will again take up the Habeas Restoration Act.  Sens. Leahy and Dodd are asking for our help.  While restoring the rule of law and voting to uphold the principles written into our nation’s constitution ought to be a given, it, unfortunately, has not been the last few years. 

From the restorehabeas.org website:

The Habeas Corpus Restoration Act gives us a chance to reverse one of the Bush Administration’s many assaults on our civil liberties.

We all want to make America safe from terrorism, but becoming a nation that sanctions the unlawful detention of its own residents — detaining and jailing them without the chance to appear before a judge — does not make us safe. Instead, it violates a value that we have held dear for centuries — safeguarding our individual freedom before arbitrary state action.

As the NYTimes editorialized:

In 2006, acting in reckless haste before an election, 65 senators and 250 members of the House defied the Constitution, endangered the safety of American soldiers and hurt the nation’s global reputation by passing the Military Commissions Act. The law created a separate, substandard and clearly unconstitutional system of trial and punishment for foreigners. This week Congress has a chance to begin fixing that grievous mistake.

The Senate is expected to consider a measure that would reverse one of the worst aspects of the 2006 law — the suspension of the right of habeas corpus, the ancient principle that no governing power may lock people up without the chance for a hearing in a court of law.

The protection from arbitrary arrest, embedded in the Magna Carta and in the Constitution of the United States, is one of the most powerful weapons against tyranny in democracy’s arsenal. Before President Bush, only one American president suspended habeas corpus — Abraham Lincoln, during the Civil War — and the Supreme Court duly struck down that arrogation of power….

On Constitution Day, it would do all of us well to remember that the rule of law, not the many whims of Bush, rules in the United States. And that includes a reminder to all the Bushies out there who are sending out resumes for the post-Bush era as fast as Cranes can print up more watermarked beige paper.  

I will have more tomorrow on what we can do to push habeas restoration forward.  In the meantime, restorehabeas.org has a couple of videos from Sens. Dodd and Leahy that I thought readers might find of interest.  And Taylor has a great guest post from Sen. Dodd for the reading.  Get ready to make some calls tomorrow.  Your constitution needs you…

(Photo of the original Magna Carta via the National Archives.)

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