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The Wright Perspective℠
Social Commentary from the C-Suite to Main Street℠
A Blog by Gary Wright II
The new Terror Trial bill was a complete waste of time!
Friday, September 29, 2006
I am extremely disappointed that our leaders wasted time passing the new Terror Trial bill. The bill is unconstitutional and will be quickly struck down by the Supreme Court. This bill was just a ploy to gain support for the upcoming elections.
The US Senate passed the bill with a 65-34 vote, following a similar bill backed by the House of Representatives.
Prez Bush says he is interested in justice, but this only came up after the Supreme Court ruled against the previous way that we interrogate and prosecute foreign terror suspects. This also comes right after an incident where a computer programmer was abducted at the airport, flown to Jordan, driven to Syria where he was tortured and held in a secret prison for ten months. The man was innocent! Canada has apologized to him, but nothing could ever be done to explain the way he was treated.
I support an aggressive policy against terror suspects, but we must not resort to unconstitutional tactics. The first problem with the new bill is that it does away with the right to habeous corpus. Another issue is that it short-circuits our system of checks and balances.
To skip past all of the spin and legalese, here is how the new bill works:
Who is the judge in a terror case? The US government / military.
Who is the jury in a terror trial? The US government / military.
Who is the prosecutor in a terror trial? The US government / military.
Who defends the suspect? The US government / military.
I am disappointed that this bill was passed, and I hope the United States Supreme Court expedites the process of declaring the bill unconstitutional.
I encourage you to contact your elected officials and express your views regarding this matter. I hope that you will also remember this during the upcoming elections!