Bill of Rights Requiem

Congratulations, America, you’ve finally done it. The Bill of Rights is officially a dead document. I hope you sleep better now, safe in the knowledge that your government can now come drag you out of your bed and imprison you for as long as they see fit, not once ever affording you the opportunity to seek counsel or, for that matter, even telling you the offense for which you are being held. What’s more, they can, at their pleasure, force you to submit to all manners of techniques designed to make you tell them anything they want to hear.

In the name of ‘national security’, the current administration has effectively killed the concept of habeus corpus, the constitutional safeguard in civilized countries designed to protect individual freedoms against arbitrary state action. “Produce the body” it says… let the public see the accused, let us put a face to her/him. And once he’s been produced, then we, as citizens, have the opportunity to follow the proceedings by which s/he’s adjudicated, and judge for ourselves whether the law has been judiciously applied.

But no more. With the stroke of a pen, George W. Bush has countermanded over two hundred years of Constitutional observance in our country. Now, any citizen or non-citizen can be whisked off to some secret prison of the government’s choosing and held against her/his will for as long as the government deems proper, without being charged of any crimes, with no safeguards to the liberties guaranteed under our Bill of Rights.

In case you’re not a strong student of history, this is not anything new. We saw a pretty good example of this during the last century in Germany. It is now officially our army against the world, and I guarantee you that if someone doesn’t wake up soon, we are in for very dark days.

But it is our decision, or at least we’re led to believe that our votes still count, although after the recent debacles in Florida and Ohio an argument could be made that such is not the case. So when you pull the lever on that voting machine, make damned sure you know who and what you’re voting for.