Bush “We Don’t Need No Stinking 4th or 6th Amendments, But We Must Have Torture”

Brian Zick

Specter's Warrantless Spy Bill Stalls AP reports that Russ Feingold "and five other senators, three of them Republicans" forced Cheney's poodle Specter to delay the committee's vote on a bill which would legalize Bush's current criminal misconduct. via McJoan at dailykos Bush Attempt at Kangaroo Court Tribunals Disparaged by Military Lawyers Charles Babington and R Jeffrey Smith for WaPo report that President Bush's campaign to sharply limit the courtroom rights of suspected terrorists ran into opposition yesterday from key Republican senators and even top uniformed military lawyers, who said it would violate basic principles of justice. The military lawyers told a House panel that they particularly object to Bush's bid to allow terrorism suspects to be convicted on secret evidence that is withheld from the defendants. The Difference Between “Outrages Upon Personal Dignity” and "Conduct That Shocks the Conscience.” Adam Liptak for the NY Times reports that Bush is still trying to employ torture despite his favored interrogation methods being rejected by the military. Many of the harsh interrogation techniques repudiated by the Pentagon on Wednesday would be made lawful by legislation put forward the same day by the Bush administration. And the courts would be forbidden from intervening. (…) Indeed, the proposed legislation takes pains to try to ensure that the Supreme Court will not have a second bite at the apple. “The act makes clear,” it says in its introductory findings, “that the Geneva Conventions are not a source of judicially enforceable individual rights.” (…) But the new legislation would interpret “outrages upon personal dignity” relatively narrowly, adopting a standard enacted last year in an amendment to the Detainee Treatment Act proposed by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. The amendment prohibits “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and refers indirectly to an American constitutional standard that prohibits conduct which “shocks the conscience.” There is substantial room for interpretation, legal experts said, between Common Article 3’s strict prohibition of, for instance, humiliating treatment and the McCain amendment’s ban only on conduct that “shocks the conscience.”

The text is from the poem “QUADRENNIAL” by Golden, reprinted with permission. It was first published in the Poetry Project. Inside front cover photo by Golden.
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