On December 16 Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio voted to toss people into prison forever without charges, just because the government says that these people are terrorists. The Government doesn’t have to file charges or prove its accusations in court. That would be a trial, and trials are apparently out of date. In voting to [...]

Peter Hoekstra may be afraid of what might happen if the American system of justice is allowed to proceed with the Guantanamo suspects, but justice is not something that should be altered in order to suit politicians’ fears.

Given Chris Dodd’s recent connection to corruption scandals, his retirement won’t be much of a loss for either the Senate Democrats in general, or for progressives in particular.

The prisons of Guantanamo are an international symbol of the shameful disintegration of American liberty. Yet, Senator Jim Bunning has the audacity to compare Guantanamo to the Statue of Liberty itself.

S.Amdt. 2669 to H.R. 2847 may be promoted as a measure to improve the security of our nation, but in fact it constitutes an attack against the very definition of what makes the United States of America a nation. If measures such as this legislation succeed, there will be nothing meaningful left of the USA to keep secure.

Maloney’s record places her high above Gillibrand’s short record in the House. Gillibrand’s record in the Senate is no better. She has taken little meaningful legislative action, and has earned a net score on our Senate legislative scorecard of just 8 points out of a possible 100.

Whether these bills, or new legislation like them that would prohibit Obama from moving forward with his Bush-style tribunal show trials, are moved out of committee will be the test of whether Democrats in Congress are willing to stand up for the Constitution or are content to acquiesce, and bring their political party in alignment with the Bush-era politics of fear.

Many Democrats currently in Congress capitulated to George W. Bush back in 2006 and voted in favor of the Military Commissions Act. It seems that many of these Democrats are too ashamed of their own moral weakness to work to undo their past mistakes.

It’s plainly stupid for the American government to play hardball with people who have been mistakenly imprisoned – people who never had anything to do with terrorism in the first place. Restoring the right to habeas corpus helps our government to finally get smart, and start focusing its efforts on suspects who actually have some likelihood of being connected to terrorist conspiracies.

Vito Fossella has committed worse offenses – such as spreading false propaganda about torture at Guantanamo Bay. Vito Fossella brought the news back to American voters that prisoners at Guantanamo were treated very well – after he took a tour of the prison pre-arranged, by the Bush White House, and escorted by armed guards who didn’t allow him to actually talk to any of the prisoners. There was plenty of notice for the Guantanamo Bay prison to clean up and prepare a good show for Fossella, of course. The Bush White House used Congressman Fossella as a chump, and Fossella seemed either unaware or unbothered by that.