Posted on 04/04/2008 11:24:46 AM PDT by SpaceBar
After 50 years, an American state secret has been revealed, about the arrest of 12,000 people because of Hoovers red paranoia.
The former director of the FBI, Edgar Hoover made plans for the arrest of 12,000 American citizens which he considered to be threats to national security documents reveals that no longer bear the status of state secret.
Hoover sent this request to the president at the time Harry Truman at the beginning of the Korean war during the 50s.
He justified the move as necessary for protection from treason, spies and sabotage. For now there is no evidence to whether these arrests actually occurred in practice or not.
Changes of laws due to exceptional circumstances
Hoover asked Truman to suspend the century old right to a defence in court that protected the individual citizens from unlawful arrest (better known as Habeas Corpus). Hoover planned on breaking this law and putting 12,000 people in military and federal prisons. The list of suspects took years to make, and the moment came to implement the plans of illegal confinement. The American Congress authorised the law in July 1950 after the Korea was broke out.
Truman said that an exceptional situation was at hand, and that his changes must be implemented.
Today, those secret documents no longer carry the marking of state secret, and the public has had an opportunity to see their contents. As mentioned, 12 thousand people were in question, of which 97 percent were American citizens.
(more at link...)
The Constitution does not specify that the power to suspend is granted exclusively to Congress.
Me either, but think about some of the names that might have been on that list, that was what I was doing. Imagine if Oswald was on it, or any number of communist sympathizers who’s detention would have changed our history.
I didn’t say I agreed with it, I was pointing out how much it could have changed history is all.
Would you rather he arrested William Taft, Thomas Dewey, Richard Nixon or prominent Republicans? How about arresting you?
Grant the president the right to jail 'traitors' without trial and you're leaving yourself at the mercy of his definition of just who a traitor is.
Who gets to define just who the traitor is?
The dem’s can’t decide who their nominee will be between fric and frac, can you imagine the debate over what a traitor would be?
There were only 12,000 Communists in America? Or only 12,000 Communists in influential positions.
There are probably 12,000 Communists in Berkeley (or at least FROM Berkeley in Washington DC, NYC, etc. wherever the latest WTO, G8 Summit, anti-American war protest etc. is being held) alone today.
Duh, talk radio.
And half of those have office hours in Boalt Hall.
It's all academic anyway. The suspension of habeas corpus is not a blanket power. The Supreme Court ruled in 1865 that habeas corpus cannot be suspended in parts of the country where the courts operate freely and openly. Not that the Constitution was ever a big concern to J. Edgar.
Why no mention of the list?
FOI request anyone?
Is there a reason why the MSM has not jumped at this opportunity?
< /sarc >
California (State) senator wants to drop Cold War communist laws (AP on Bakersfield Californian | 3/30/08 | Steve Lawrence - ap)
Sen. Alan Lowenthal thinks it's about time that California removes some of the last vestiges of the Cold War from its laws.The Long Beach Democrat has introduced a bill that would scrap statutes allowing teachers and other public employees to be fired for being members of the Communist Party.
The measure, scheduled to be considered Wednesday by the Senate Education Committee, also would drop a requirement that representatives of organizations seeking to use school facilities sign a form stating they do not have communist affiliations.
I doubt this is merely a "symbolic" gesture. Someone must've been denied a job indoctrinating America's young at some point.
I'm not sure Michael Savage is qualified to decide who is sane and who is not, much less who is a traitor and who is not.
I concur.
Guess who has a vested interest in perpetuating the myth?
(Follow the cockroaches...)
Sure. They just happened to stick it in a list of things Congress can and can't do, in the article that defines and establishes Congress, and before the article establishing and defining the executive. What sense would it make to give the President the ability to unilaterally suspend oversight of himself? Can you really see the founders of this country doing that?
I completely agree. But that is effectively what granting the President the authority to suspend habeas corpus does. That's why I can't agree that there is any ambiguity as to who has the power. The founders would not have allowed the executive to have that power.
You are right...but the Supreme Court has always upheld that standard, particularly in the case of Lincoln’s suspension of the writ circa 1862, which was struck down on those grounds
nevertheless, the minimum standard for suspension of the writ(rebellion or invasion) has not been met since the US Civil War
A traitor has to be alligned with an enemy nation in a time of war. So says our own Constitution.
The Cold War was a war that encompasses a number of Hot wars as well.
While the Left can claim that the far right speaks “anti-government” rhetoric, that is sedition at most. There is no allignment with foreign movements.
The Left is alligned with global socialist, communist, anarchist, green movements. Islam is alligned with the international Islamic imperialism movement.
Who do Constitutional conservatives find friendly to their cause around this world?
The Supreme Court did. Then Lincoln got Congress to suspend the writ, which was upheld
Which suggests that, rather than eliminating those laws, they should be updated to include the current suspects...
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