Someone with a much better grasp of the Constitution will need to explain this one to me.
I think the problem here is --- Gonzales is right.
If you read the exchange provided at the bottom, it is pretty straightforward. The constitution does not grant a right-- in the way that we find things such as freedom of speech. The constitution acknowleges habeas corpus but it is not the the origin of that claim.
Of course, this technical clarification does not matter to the paranoid attackers of the Bush administration on the right and left. Clearly Gonzales wants to put everyone in jail and rule as a solitary dictator. The SF Chronicle concedes that no such proposals are in the works -- but it doesn't matter. The world of Bush is absolutely incomprehensibly immoral and wrong.
Strict construction.
It's very simple, he's wrong. Completely and utterly wrong.
It's very simple. We need only to look to The Declaration...
"...We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
I say also among these is the right to tell any government to p!$$ off. Who the hell does Gonzales think he is? Some sort of lord or baron?
The people who have been appointed by those we elected...and to a large degree, those we elected...seem to have forgotten the simple concept of government of the people, by the people and for the people.
"This country belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it." --Abraham Lincoln
actually it is very clear.
I think the context is the GItmo detainees.
War combatants and terrorists have no habeas corpus rights.
This is not news, this is just a san francisco hippie smoking too much pot when writing for a dinosaur media paper.
Basically Specter was right and Gonzales was wrong. Habeas Corpus' status in the Constitution was established in an 1808 ruling by John Marshall.
Marshall said that the Constitution's habeas corpus clause obliged the first congress to establish its "life and activity" as an power of the court. The constitution's clause thus functions as more than a simple prohibition against suspension. It makes the court's power to issue the writ an affirmative one. As Marshall wrote, "if the means [of issuing the writ] be not in existence, the privilege itself would be lost, although no law for its suspension should be enacted."
That is also why attempting to do a backdoor suspension of habeas by stripping court jurisdiction would be unconstitutional, even though stripping court jurisdiction on other matters would not.
The Constitution acknowledges that habeas corpus exists extra-consitutionally by banning it's suspension. It does not grant the right to habeas corpus - it already existed pre-constitution.
this is old news.
Fact is, he is correct. That is because the constitution grants the citizens no rights whatsoever. They are too many to list.
What it does it say what rights the government cannot take away. Which is what he is saying.