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Congress's Shameful Retreat From American Values

By Garrison Keillor

The Chicago Tribune

Wednesday 04 October 2006

I would not send my college kid off for a semester abroad if I were you. Last week, we suspended human rights in America, and what goes around comes around. Ixnay habeas corpus.

The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor and majesty, decided that an "enemy combatant" is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish grandmother or your Czech au pair, and can be arrested and held for as long as authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to examine the matter. If your college kid were to be arrested in Bangkok or Cairo, suspected of "crimes against the state" and held in prison, you'd assume that an American foreign service officer would be able to speak to your kid and arrange for a lawyer, but this may not be true anymore. Be forewarned.

The Senate also decided it's up to the president to decide whether it's OK to make these enemies stand naked in cold rooms for a couple of days in blinding light and be beaten by interrogators. This is now purely a bureaucratic matter:

The plenipotentiary stamps the file "enemy combatants" and throws the poor schnooks into prison and at his leisure he tries them by any sort of kangaroo court he wishes to assemble and they have no right to see the evidence against them, and there is no appeal. This was passed by 65 senators and will now be signed by President Bush, put into effect, and in due course be thrown out by the courts.

It's good that Barry Goldwater is dead because this would have killed him.

Go back to the Senate of 1964 - Goldwater, Dirksen, , McCarthy, Javits, Morse, Fulbright - and you won't find more than 10 votes for it.

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in

public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the

Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Ideal. Mark their names.

Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees to these people

forfeits its honor.

, Allard, , , Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr,

Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, , , Cornyn, Craig,

Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham,

Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, , Kyl,

Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, ez, McCain,

McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, of Florida, of Nebraska,

Pryor, , Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, ,

Specter, Stabenow, s, Sununu, Talent, , Thune, Vitter,

Voinovich, Warner.

To paraphrase Sir Walter : Mark their names and mark them well. For

them, no minstrel raptures swell. High though their titles, proud their name,

boundless their wealth as wish can claim, these wretched figures shall go down

to the vile dust from whence they sprung, unwept, unhonored and unsung.

Three Republican senators made a show of opposing the bill and after they'd

collected all the praise they could get, they quickly folded. Why be a hero

when you can be fairly sure that the court will dispose of this piece of

garbage. If, however, the court does not, then our country has taken a step

toward totalitarianism. If the government can round up someone and never be

required to explain why, then it's no longer the United States as you and I

always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest

dreams. They have made us become like them.

I got some insight last week into who supports torture when I went down to

Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church. It was spooky. I walked

in, was met by two burly security men with walkie-talkies, and within 10

minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes' church and that it

would be better if I didn't talk about politics. I was there on a book tour for

"Homegrown Democrat," but they thought it better if I didn't mention it. So I

tried to make light of it: I told the audience, "I don't need to talk politics. I

have no need even to be interested in politics - I'm a citizen, I have plenty of

money and my grandsons are at least 12 years away from being eligible for

military service." And the audience applauded! Those were their sentiments

exactly. We've got ours, and who cares?

The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be snatched

off the streets, flown to Guantanamo Bay, stripped naked, forced to stand for

48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise. So why should they worry?

It's only the Jews who are in danger, and the homosexuals and gypsies. The

Christians are doing fine. If you can't trust a Methodist with absolute power to

arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?

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What wories me is the guy at the door of the lecture........that is reminiscent of the 30's in Germany.

We shld all reead ANIMAL FARM!

troubling

ao

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