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05 Dec 2006 02:01 am

Bush vs Habeas Corpus

Maybe the outrage will build. A reader writes:

My god! What a coward this man Bush is. What cowards his enablers are. This guy has no idea the precedent he is setting. He is spitting at the grave of Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and Franklin. How the f*** does he not have a problem with American citizens being held without charge and under those circumstances? I knew he was an idiot frat boy with a tiny sadistic side, but this is unreal.

Yes, it's unreal. Here is what Padilla's lawyers claim was done to him:

"Isolation; sleep and sensory depravation; hoodings; stress positions; exposure to noxious fumes; exposure to temperature extremes; threats of imminent execution; assaults; the forced administration of mind-altering substances; denial of religious practices; manipulation of diet; and other forms of mistreatment."

Padilla, by the way, was not captured on a "battlefield." He was detained in Chicago. He has a U.S. passport. This could happen to any American anywhere this president decides to call an "enemy combatant." To be kept in the dark in solitary and treated the way Padilla has been treated without charges being brought ... until four years later. It's unconscionable.

And then you realize ... Karl Rove was intending to use this issue as a way to win the election. He was going to brandish the suspension of habeas corpus as an election gambit. That's who we have in the Oval Office.

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