oday, 135 years to the day after the last
American President (Ulysses S. Grant) suspended habeas corpus,
President Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act of
2006. At its worst, the legislation allows President Bush or
Donald Rumsfeld to declare anyone — US citizen or not — an enemy
combatant, lock them up and throw away the key without a chance
to prove their innocence in a court of law. In other words,
every thing the Founding Fathers fought the British empire to
free themselves of was reversed and nullified with the stroke of
a pen, all under the guise of the War on Terror.
Jonathan Turley joined Keith to talk about
the law that Senator Feingold said would be seen as "a stain on
our nation's history."
Turley: "People have no idea how significant
this is. Really a time of shame this is for the American
system.—The strange thing is that we have become sort of
constitutional couch potatoes. The Congress just gave the
President despotic powers and you could hear the yawn across the
country as people turned to Dancing With the Stars. It's
otherworldly..People clearly don't realize what a fundamental
change it is about who we are as a country. What happened today
changed us. And I'm not too sure we're gonna change back anytime
soon."