First Habeas Corpus, Now Due Process

Written by Becky Akers
Monday, 06 July 2009 01:17

In their ongoing war against liberty, our rulers drag any excuse, however lame, into the fray. For a while, we heard how their victims at Gitmo were neither fish nor fowl, neither American citizens nor prisoners of war, but “enemy combatants.” That magic phrase voided the Constitution’s adamant prohibition against locking folks up and losing the key: “The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” (Art. 1, Sec. 9) Our right to the Writ is so essential that the Founders elaborate on it in Amendments 5 (“No person shall be ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”) and 6 (“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial...”). Indeed, they deliberately speak of “persons” and “the accused,” not “citizens”: their commands against arbitrary punishment bind government regardless of a defendant’s status, nationality, or supposed crimes. The Feds may not imprison anyone, even a foreign terrorist, without first openly establishing his guilt in a court of law.
No matter. Along comes another of Leviathan’s minor minions with two more jaw-dropping pronouncements from the War-on-Freedom-Disguised-as-a-War-on-Terror. Richard Falkenrath currently leeches off us as “NYPD counterterrorism chief”; prior to that, he was one of the Bush administration’s yes-men, urging the U.S. to thrash Israel’s enemies for her. Not content with eviscerating the Constitution and common decency abroad, he worked just as hard to undermine them here at home: “He was the principal author of the National Strategy for Homeland Security and was centrally involved in the stand-up of the Department of Homeland Security, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (the predecessor to today’s National Counterterrorism Center), and the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center.” Meanwhile, Dick sat on the boards of corporations profiting from the perpetual war he advocates.
Falkenrath spoke at the neoconservative Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) recently. There he argued for trashing due process along with habeas corpus: “I think as the administration brings more and more high-profile terrorism cases into federal court, we will see an increasing drain on investigative resources from new investigations that haven't resulted in an arrest.”
Yes, you read that right. Let the accused rot in jail without trial lest proving their guilt overtax the government that overtaxes us: Dick prizes the State, not those caught in its claws and certainly not freedom. The New York Times helpfully if awkwardly parsed this tyranny for us: “In New York, as in other large cities, local authorities work closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on F.B.I.-led terrorism task forces that investigate tips and support terrorism prosecutions. Mr. Falkenrath expressed concern that federal and police investigators could be pulled off their current cases to support the important court trials.” We wouldn’t want that to happen now, would we? Shepherds might be left tending their sheep in Afghanistan rather than writhing on waterboards at Gitmo if investigators have to bother about such details as evidence and charges and guilt or innocence.
As though his bald totalitarianism weren’t bad enough, Dick hastened to divulge Reason #2 for refusing to waste “resources” on trying “high-profile cases”: “We need to be prepared for the consequences of an indictment and a prosecution that goes badly, and results in the release of someone who we really do not want released in the United States.” You know how pesky trials can be when they establish a suspect’s innocence – and government’s error. Neither of which exists in fact, of course, since rulers are never wrong: no, a suspect escapes their clutches solely because of prosecutorial incompetence. So why not dispense with trials and simply accept the State’s slanders against Gitmo’s inmates? Indeed, going straight from arrest to indefinite incarceration would certainly streamline our inefficient courts – so much so that the government may want to try it here as well. No need to waste time and money on trials for alleged drug dealers, tax cheats, or those new public enemies, members of militias and Ron Paul’s voters.
Falkenrath’s a penny-ante thug and always will be. He’ll never attain the prominence of such dictator wannabes as Clinton, Bush, and Obama or even the lower echelons of Congress. He’s merely one of the countless cogs in the machinery that feeds the State’s maw, a functionary trussing innocents for Leviathan’s altar. His vile opinions don’t matter – except that they reveal what the Big Bosses may have in mind for all of us, not just “terrorists.”
But Dick’s as diligent as his superiors when it comes to shifting blame. “The foremost threat facing New York,” he claims, “is international terrorism.”
Nope. Our foremost threat is Dick and his fellow cogs.

Source: Becky Akers