Idealink

Feeding off the article written by good old Peter N at Peter’s Attic, one of my favorite blogs, I have damning evidence against the administration.

Administration View: President Bush has claimed, in removing habeas corpus from the detainees at Gitmo (Guantanamo Bay Naval Base) that these “enemy combatants”are not subject to the U.S. Constitution because, technically, it is not U.S. soil. The base is simply a military installation operated on Cuban soil. Let us be clear – Cuba does not want us there.

Opposition View: Because it is a permanent military installation, and not a temporary one, the law of the land (the Constitution) applies.

Other Useful Notes: Two ideas that are worth prefacing with are jus soli and jus sanguinis. The former means “rights from the land” and the latter “rights through blood”. Basically, if a country practices jus soli, it means being born within its borders means you are a citizen. If a country practices jus sanguinis, it means if one or both of your parents are citizens, you are automatically a citizen. The U.S. happens to practice both.

The path to citizenship for someone who was born under jus sanguinis is that s/he must prove that his/her parent(s) are U.S. citizen(s).

My Argument: If jus soli applies at Gitmo, then it is considered U.S. soil. If it is U.S. soil, then the Constitution applies. Even if jus soli doesn’t apply at Gitmo, the U.S. should pass a Constitutional amendment stating that any endeavor funded by government overseas is subject to Constitutional supremacy.

Possible Proof: On the internet, information is a fluid and incomplete thing, and getting it is somewhat touch-and-go. As such, my research has found that the human and civil rights of those detainees at Gitmo depend on this man. Scott G. Blair was born at Gitmo and has traveled overseas quite a bit. The question is: did he get his passport with a birth certificate, or did he need to go through a consular review? If he was given a passport simply by the fact that his birth certificate “Guantanamo Bay Naval Base Medical Center”, then Gitmo is U.S. soil.

The fate of the United States, and its future, rest on Scott G. Blair’s shoulders.

I started a new blog, called Article V (named for the portion of the US Constitution that concerns changing the “law of the land”). In my first analysis: Bush’s signing statements and the EPA decision. Some excerpts:

The Bush administration is wildly inconsistent in their determination of what it’s allowed to do. According to Mother Jones magazine, Presidential signing statements were used sparingly through history – 600 times. In the current Bush administration, it has been used 800 times. The American Bar Association opposes signing statements existing.

Including signing statements and other initiatives, the President has invoked his (office’s) authority to:

1. Strip habeas corpus from human people. (The Republican Congress later made it legal)
2. Interpret Sarbanes-Oxley’s whistleblower protection to mean whistleblowers are not protected (the last paragraph says that whistleblowers can only blow whistles in ongoing investigations, and to only the House or Senate member who chairs the committee investigating the law).
3. Start an illegal war.
4. Manage that illegal war without oversight.

But magic boy-wonder Roberts? His dissent is one of the most flippant and political I’ve seen. He depends partly on the fact that those that sued the EPA did not refer to a case that seemed to contradict them, in terms of whether states can bring the case to the Supreme Court

It disappoints me that this argument, the one on which he rests his entire position, is so weak that a pop-constitutionist can poke holes in it.