DROWNING

WHEN PROCESS COUNTS more than people, more than human dignity is lost.  Moral man sinks in an amoral sea. The waters are washing over the United States Senate. Senators Bill Frist and Lindsay Graham are taking us down with them.

SENATOR BILL FRIST is more worried about the leak revealing CIA prisons where “aggressive techniques” are applied in interrogations. [story]

Frist was asked if that meant he was not concerned about investigating what goes on in detention centers.

"I am not concerned about what goes on and I'm not going to comment about the nature of that," Frist replied . . . "I'm going to make sure that everything that's done is consistent with the Constitution ... and the laws of the United States of America," he said.

BILL FRIST JOINS BUSH in denying we torture anyone.  Just why do we need these prisons on foreign soil?  Frist makes much of his status as a heart surgeon and a senator. Whether he can see another human heart with his eyes wide open is an open question.

SENATOR LINDSAY GRAHAM WANTS to eliminate habeas corpus rights for all “enemy combatant” detainees in The War on Terror [Talk Left]

This is an end-run around the Supreme Court's decision in  Rasul v. Bush which held Guantanamo detainees have the right to challenge the legality of their detentions.

RESPECTING HUMAN rights and rule of law takes too long.  The war in Iraq has given us battles for all we hold dear in the United States Constitution.  We are losing.

RECOMMENDED ADDITIONAL READING
[WaPo] "What I object to is criminalizing the war. Enemy combatants, POWs have never had access to federal court before," said Graham, a 20-year Air Force lawyer. 

THE HERETIK HAS SAID this before.  Guantanamo and the legal arguments applied to its residents seem fixed in one place. Once we accept restricting access to redress to the least in our legal system, what more can we expect? The Bush administration quite deliberately has placed thes prisoners off shore, a seeming splash away from the solid protection found in the bedrock of our constitution.  The physical distance is a metaphor for how distant our concern for them should be.  The concept of unilimited unquestioned power that brushes aside concerns may touch us all more closely soon enough.

UPDATE
GRAHAM MEASURE PASSES [AP] The Senate voted Thursday to bar foreign terror suspects at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from challenging their detentions in American courts, despite a Supreme Court ruling last year that granted access.[via Talk Left]