today's must-read

Today's NY Times has an editorial strongly criticizing the House's passage of the Administration's anti-terrorism bill. If you value your rights, and your life, you should read it. Among its criticism of the behavior of the Democratic party is a list of the worst flaws of the bill:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

The bill has been rushed through right before mid-term elections. The entire House of Representatives is up for re-election in one month. I cringe just to think of the attack ads, calling nay voters "soft on terrorism," that'll be coming out in the next few weeks. The Times accuses the Democrats of having "misplaced their spines," and they're absolutely right.

Maybe you're the sort of person who thinks that these actions are warranted, that strong tactics are needed to keep the country safe, that suicide bombers and terrorists forfeit their rights under the Geneva Conventions by not adhering to the traditional rules of war. I'm not going to bother addressing that argument now. What I will say, though, is that you had better be damn sure that the people you put into this legal black hole, subject to "interrogation techniques" out of the KGB's worst nightmares, are the guilty. And how can you make sure of that if you don't have trials? If you don't have review of the evidence? If the definition of "enemy combatant" broad and subjective? If you deny people their basic right to a lawyer and a review of their case? You end up with extraordinary rendition in the open, 100 miles outside of US soil. You end up with Maher Arar. How many people like him are sitting in Guantanamo? How will we ever know?