Posted on 01/24/2007 7:45:58 AM PST by SmithL
"The Constitution doesn't say every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas,'' Gonzales told Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Jan. 17.
Gonzales acknowledged that the Constitution declares "habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless ... in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.'' But he insisted that "there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.''
Specter was incredulous, asking how the Constitution could bar the suspension of a right that didn't exist -- a right, he noted, that was first recognized in medieval England as a shield against the king's power to dispatch troublesome subjects to royal dungeons.
Later in the hearing, Gonzales described habeas corpus as "one of our most cherished rights'' and noted that Congress had protected that right in the 1789 law that established the federal court system. But he never budged from his position on the absence of constitutional protection -- a position that seemingly would leave Congress free to reduce habeas corpus rights or repeal them altogether.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
No, he is not. He may be correct that the Constitution does not 'grant' rights - but he also said that American citizens do not have the right to the Great Writ, because such right is not granted by the Constitution. The latter part is grossly incorrect, and hardly debatable.
Lincoln suspended it 3 times during that "Bloody Affair". He arrested over 13,000 US citizens during the war.
Well, we now have a new boilerplate question for all future nominees to the post of Attorney General: "Does the U.S. Constitution grant the right of habeus corpus?" Anyone who fails to answer "Yes" to that question will not be confirmed by the Senate.
So I guess we can thank Gonzales for that. In another two years, at most, he'll be gone. But the question he inspired will live on. And now Attorney General nominees will undoubtedly be quizzed on a host of other fundamental questions to determine if they possess a basic knowledge and understanding of our Constitution.
Which Gonzales apparently doesn't.
The right is conditional, not absolute.
It seems to me that if the Constitution says that habeas corpus can be suspended "...in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety..." then Congress can certainly reduce habeas corpus rights or repeal them altogether "in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety".
How hard is that to understand?
Are you serious? The Constitution is not the origin of any of our rights. Our rights exist because we are human and endowed by our Creator....yada yada yada. The Constitution merely protects our rights from undue government interference.
This was one of the reasons people objected to including the Bill of Rights because certain other people would come along and say if it's not enumerated in the Constitution then we don't have it.
Sorry, it doesn't work that way, not even to protect something stupid the President's AG said.
The BOR was appended to the Constitution to give a broad list of rights already possessed by the citizens.
The Federal Government grants us nothing, but does (or rather should) acknowledge our God-given rights as free men.
Strict construction.
Bush should have been doing likewise right from the get-go.
They damn well ought to be.
The chief law enforcement officer in this country is either ignorant of what the Constitution says or willing to argue something he knows to be false. Neither option speaks well of him.
You are not addressing the fact that what Alberto said is entirely correct.
Possibly, and a part of me agrees with you, however, in today's climate they would have tried to impeach him for even suggesting it. We are too spoiled as a nation to make the hard decisions anymore. It shall be our undoing.
This should go down as yet another silly reactionary thread on FR desperate to prove the evils of the Bush administration.
Gonzales never says Americans don't have habeas rights. He simply specifies issues of origin.
The Gitmo detainees can rot.
That is what this nonsense is about and we all know it.
The effort to strain out something else is untrue.
I was going to make a joke about him confusing our Constitution with the Mexican Constitution but then I realized that it might not be a laughing matter.
They ought to just undercut the housing of soldiers in homes Amendment, because that's the only part of the Constitution that hasn't been assaulted and ruined by statists. Might as well finish the job.
The Constitution itself was writ against Federal government encroachment on the states, listing exactly what the Feds could do. [Completely wrong. The constitution was written and ratified to vastly INCREASE federal power over the states. It explicitly REDUCES state power in almost every important area thereby removing all real sovereignty. It was written to LIMIT the states' powers.]
The BoR was written to control ONLY the federal government while leaving state governments free to violate them at will if not prohibited within their constitutions.
"The privileges and benefit of the writ of Habeas Corpus shall be enjoyed in this Government, in the most expeditious and ample manner; and shall not be suspended by the Legislature, except upon the most urgent and pressing occasions, and for a limited time not exceeding months."
If it absolutely must be suspended, the legislative branch must do it....not the executive branch. This is upheld by the Supreme Court in Ex Parte Bollman and Swartwout and Ex Parte Merryman
It's very simple, he's wrong. Completely and utterly wrong.
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