THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

John Dean takes the time in his column at FindLaw.com to examine the atrocious, and atrociously named, "Bringing Terrorists to Justice Act of 2006". With it, ODEL seeks a grant of authority from Congress to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants to whomever he designates with no recourse when he screws up, as is his wont. You don't believe me, consider this:

In summarizing the proposal, the draft makes clear it will not follow court-martial law as an example of a "regularly constituted court." In fact, there is no "regularly constituted court" in the United States that follows the procedures requested by the Administration.

More specifically, the bill states: "In a time of ongoing armed conflict, it generally is neither practicable nor appropriate for combatants like al Qaeda terrorists to be tried before tribunals that include all of the procedures associated with courts-martial."

Accordingly, the proposed legislation declares that the tribunals will not "share classified information with the accused" -- or, apparently, the accused's attorney, even though that attorney would be an officer of the court, if not a commissioned military officer. The bill also declares permissible "the use of hearsay evidence" because "applying the hearsay rules from the Manual for Courts-Martial or from the Federal Rules of Evidence would make it virtually impossible" to convict the terrorists. And it says terrorists will not benefit from the guarantee of "speedy trials" and other "technical rules."

In short, the Administration has asked Congress for legislation that, on its face, fails to meet the standard of creating tribunals that qualify as "regularly constituted court[s] affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."

Or this:

One of the most sweeping provisions of this proposed law takes the federal courts out of the business of providing any redress whatsoever, to anyone who becomes entangled - correctly or incorrectly - on the wrong side of the war on terror. It simply removes federal jurisdiction "to hear or consider any claim or cause of action, including an application for a writ of habeas corpus" filed by any non-citizen of the United States who has been detained "as an unlawful enemy combatant." (Many bloggers have called for Democrats to filibuster the proposed law for this reason alone.)

This term is vaguely defined to mean anyone who the President or the Secretary of Defense claims is "part of or affiliated with a force or organization--including but not limited to al Qaeda, the Taliban, any international terrorist organization, or associated forces--engaged in hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents; in violation of the law of war;" or has "committed a hostile act in aid of such a force or organization so engaged;" or has "supported hostilities in aid of such a force or organization so engaged."

In short, this could include anyone the federal government (Bush and Rumsfeld will delegate and re-delegate this authority) labels "an unlawful enemy combatant." The type of tragic case that comes immediately to mind is that of Maher Arar. Arar, a Canadian, was arrested on September 26, 2002, when he landed at Kennedy Airport in New York, traveling home from a vacation in Tunisia. American officials sent him to Syria, where he was tortured for ten months.

In short, if ODEL or any of his designated Bushovik cronies say "you're it", then you're it and may whatever God you pray to have mercy on your soul because they won't. And we have all seen how often they 'never make mistakes'.

And if you think they are only going after the bad guys, just remember this; they are removing any barrier between us and Gitmo if they decide that you should be next.

Feeling safer yet?