Still no habeas corpus.

The Senate did not restore the right of habeas corpus this week although 56 Senators wanted to. They needed 60 votes. Technically the lack of habeas corpus only refers to terrorists and non-Americans, but if someone is arrested how do they prove they are American? Some 75% of Americans don’t have passports and few carry their birth certificates in their pockets in case the government suddenly mistakes them for terrorists? What happens to dual nationals like myself? Or an American citizen with a strange accent?

For a government that has illegally spied on its citizens, which has tortured against international law, which has done illegal renditions, which has kidnapped people in other countries and sent them to countries that do torture and will torture…why should such a government, who does not follow the rule of law, care if they arrest American or a non-American? And of course without habeas corpus a person can disappear forever much like under any Latin American dictator (but then we trained some of them and their cohorts at the School of the Americas)

I had an ancestor who fought in the American Revolution. The Constitution guarantees the right of habeas corpus. Our government is acting outside the law and not enough Senators care. The vote was not strict party line. Besides Arnold Specter (one of the co-sponsors), five other Republican Senators supported the measure. They were Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and John E. Sununu of New Hampshire. Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, also voted for it. Lieberman was the only non Republican who sided with the Republicans. If there are 50 Democrats in the Senate now that Johnson is back what Senators were missing? (I haven't been able to track down a senator by senator vote) Maybe Obama and Clinton were out campaigning? It is something people should ask them.

Until habeas corpus is restored not one American is safe from their own government.