Christine O’Donnell Seeks To Remove Constitutional Rights
At first glance, it seems like a statement of simple common sense. Christine O’Donnell, who seeks the Republican nomination to replace Thomas Carper in the U.S. Senate, says that she “believes terrorism is an act of war requiring the full force of our intelligence and military resources rather than granting terrorists precious Constitutional rights”. Who would want to restrain the full force of American spies and soldiers from going after terrorists, after all?
There’s trouble that becomes evident in O’Donnell’s position, however, if one only stops to think about how her policy of unrestrained force against terrorists, without constitutional protections, would be applied. How would the government know who the terrorists were in the first place?
Traditionally, when the government accuses a person of a crime, such as being involved in terrorist attacks or conspiracies to commit terrorist attacks, the guilt of the accused has been determined by trial in a court of law. That’s what the Constitution guarantees in the Fifth Amendment and Sixth Amendment, which state that no one, without exception can be deprived of liberty by the federal government except through due process of law, and that all prosecution of crimes must take place through fair trials.
Christine O’Donnell seeks to overturn this centuries-old tradition. She wants federal government bureaucrats in the Executive Branch to have the power to declare people to be terrorists, without trial. Then, the accused would be deprived of the Constitutional right to due process of law through a fair trial, and so would never have the opportunity to prove their innocence.
That may not seem to be a problem to you, if all you care about is that terrorists face harsh and certain punishment. If, on the other hand, you consider what might happen if you yourself were accused of terrorism under O’Donnell’s extrajudicial system, then you may be less willing to sacrifice innocent lives for the sake of the perception of absolute security.
[...] Senate seat. Mike Castle is the current at-large Representative for Delaware in the U.S. House. Christine O’Donnell has less experience in elected office, but has been endorsed by Sarah Palin and is campaigning on [...]
[...] After January 2011, U.S. Representative Mike Castle will no longer be in Congress. He didn’t run for re-election to the House of Representatives, and just yesterday he lost the Maryland Republican primary for the U.S. Senate to Christine O’Donnell. [...]
[...] Christine O’Donnell has emerged as the most radical congressional candidate with a good chance of actually gaining a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2010. [...]