I don’t know how much time I will be spending blogging or on the Internet, but I am here now and wanted to share with you a letter that I submitted to my local paper. I hope that it is indeed published by them, I am also submitting it to many other papers in Kansas to spread the word about what the rule of law is for our preznit.
Without further ado, here is my editorial.
The President of the United States recently acknowledged that under our System of Laws, a person is INNOCENT until proven GUILTY. For whom does this rule of law apply? Does it only apply to those who are indicted in this administration? I ask this question because currently there is a US Citizen held by the Pentagon under an order by the President of the United States, who for three plus years has been held without charge, due process or the right to talk to a lawyer or his family. That person’s name is Mr. Jose Padilla.
There will be those who will state, well he is a criminal, a terrorist. That well may be true, yet he is a Citizen of the United States of America. Under our Constitution he is entitled to due process, access to an attorney and a trial. Why is it then that our President states that a member of his Administration is entitled to be deemed INNOCENT until proven GUILTY, but an ordinary member of our society is deemed to have no such right?
“There is no question more important in American constitutional law than the power of the executive branch to subject citizens to indefinite military detention without criminal trial,” Padilla’s lawyers said in court papers filed in Washington.
This is the substance of this letter to the Editor.
Mr. Padilla was arrested at a Chicago airport on May 8, 2002, on suspicion of plotting to carry out acts of terrorism. Our Constitutional procedure under the Bill of Rights, the procedure that has functioned in the United States since the beginning of our nation’s origin, provides Mr. Padilla with a right to be accused with the crime of terrorism. Indicting him, bring about a trial before a jury and providing there is a conviction, sentencing him under accordance with the Law. That is the system; the way the Constitutionally guaranteed criminal justice structure has worked for more than 200 years. These procedures upheld innumerable times by the Unites States Supreme court to insure every American the protections guaranteed by our Constitution.
Mr. Padilla being held by the Pentagon under an Executive order is something so wholly foreign, something so unfamiliar to the American way of justice and life, that it should send shivers of revulsion throughout America. Something that appears to be a replica of the actions engaged in by many of the most repressive regimes of the 20th century. Holding citizens in custody indefinitely without Due Process or access to the court system. It appears that securing a decree from President Bush that Jose Padilla is an “enemy combatant” in the “war on terrorism,” the Pentagon takes the posture that it can thwart the entire federal criminal justice system set up by the US Constitution. Abolishing rights and guarantees that extend back in history including common law and The Magna Carta of 1215. The exclusion of habeas corpus, due process, trial by jury, and right to counsel, are very specific rights engendered into our Constitution by our founding fathers and clearly violates the intent and spirit of our country’s rule of law..
My consideration of the reason that Mr. Padilla’s plight is of such critical importance to the American people is, if Mr. Padilla’s rights to Due Process are not upheld, this authoritarian doctrine will be relevant not just to Mr. Padilla but to all of America’s citizens. I believe the only reason that the President and the Pentagon have restricted the effects of such power to only one American arrested here in the US is understandable on its face: it creates much less awareness from John Q. Public and appears to provide a less viable threat to the American people.
I ask that every American, have no illusions about this unprecedented authoritarian power grab by the President and the Military command structure. If the President’s and Pentagon’s power to arrest Americans for terrorism and detain them indefinitely without federal court interference is upheld by the courts, then the Executive and Military power in America will freely flow into that vacuum created by the loss of our most valuable right, Due Process. Our American way of life will be changed for the worse, perhaps forever. Our lives will be distorted by such power in ways inconceivable by most of us. Not one American will be protected from capricious arrest, including editorial writers, broadcast journalists, government detractors, protestors and nonconformists. Even run of the mill criminals will find themselves held without charge as “enemy combatants”. Any and all Americans, yes I stated all Americans can be deemed an “enemy combatant” and placed into non law enforcement custody by Executive order and will have no remedy through Due Process. Only the pledge “we won’t abuse this power” stated by the Executive branch and the Pentagon, the governmental agencies that are culpable for sinking our people into one of the most disgraceful allegations of torture, sex abuse, and war scandals in our history, but also the resulting suppression of reality based facts.
It has become obvious that we can no longer rely on Congress to stand up for the Constitution and to protect us from this unprecedented impugning of our rights by the President and Pentagon. Congress has acquiesced its Constitutional abilities, its equality to the Executive branch and has remained silent and submissive in its condemnation in regards to the Padilla doctrine and our growing loss of civil liberties, since that tragic day on 9/11. What for me is even more appalling, the relentless submission of Congressional power yielded to the President and the Pentagon, that is perilous to our Liberty. We can hope and pray that the federal judiciary stands up decisively in the protection of our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and the judicial system that has illustriously made our nation the benchmark for others in the world to achieve, resolutely stands up in conviction to the protection of our freedoms.
Most importantly, we must clearly elevate the conscious awareness of the American people to the credible threat that the Padilla policy poses to our way of life. Especially given the high probability that the President and the Pentagon will convince our Congress to grant the Executive branch and Military absolute power over the American people that it has so determinedly avowed in the Padilla case. We must firmly state that America will never allow itself to become a military state, the right of Due Process, is undeniable, that the Constitution is inviolate in its protections to all Americans. Our Constitution has served us ably for these many years, let us not now allow it to become just a quaint notion of what once was, I want my children and grandchildren to live in the Land of the Free.
While the “rule of law” is defined as “the collective safeguard of everyone equally under the law”, President Bush’s “rule of law” appears to denote, “I rule, so I get to decide who gets protection under what laws.” Those protections are denied people whom President Bush deems “terrorists/enemy combatants” or “threats to our national security.” President Bush’s slip of the lip concerning the presumption of innocence, for example, truly must have been bitter consolation to Mr. Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held without the presumption of Innocence and without the benefits of Due Process since May 2002. I urge everyone who reads this to write to their Senators and Representatives to demand that Mr. Padilla, a US citizen, be granted his Constitutionally guaranteed rights without further delay. It is after all a right that each of us as US citizens is entitled to by one of the worlds greatest living Documents, granting freedom for every American.