Common sense...it just isn't so common anymore

“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.”

I know I'm not the smartest guy in the world, and although I do wish to go to law school and someday become an attorney, at this time I by no means consider myself an expert in law or in legal interpretation. But when the Constitution of the United States clearly states that the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus can NOT be suspended, that seems pretty clear to me that the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus can NOT be suspended!!! No, you didn’t read the same sentence twice by mistake (something I personally do all the time), I wrote the same words again, because frankly, it can’t get any simpler than that. For this reason I was curious as to how Attorney General Gonzales would respond to a seemingly iron clad statement codified in our nation’s written constitution. I really wanted to know how he was going to look Senator Specter and the rest of the Senate Judiciary Committee in their eyes and make a cohesive and logical argument that the rights of the Guantanamo detainees should be, and more importantly, could be taken away from these individuals without violating the Constitution.

Don’t get me wrong, I knew anything that would come out of his mouth couldn’t possibly justify the deprivation of the detainees rights, but I realize that there are many interpretations to the law, and that one of the beauties (but sometimes the beast) of our law, is that it changes. Words, no matter how long ago they were written, can have two very different meanings in two different periods of time, which means most things argued in law are mainly subjective and based wholly on context. I expected an argument nothing short of excellence (but still wrong) from the Attorney General of these United States, a Harvard Law man, and the highest ranking Hispanic official in our government…I was disappointed.

Apparently Attorney General Gonzales’ game plan was to disregard common sense completely…it went off without a hitch. Although the Constitution expressly states the right cannot be taken away except in specific situations, and the United States Supreme Court stated that this right also applies to non-citizens, Attorney General Gonzales decided to justify the government’s actions by attacking the idea of the right applying to detainees andcc telling the Judicial Affairs committee that it never says the words “Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.”, within the Constitution. His claim is that since the Constitution does not specify who exactly has the right to writ of habeas corpus, it means that these individuals in Guantanamo never had the right to begin with. Well, using Attorney General Gonzales’ same logic, wouldn’t that mean no one in the United States has the right to writ of habeas corpus? No one particular people, citizen or non citizen, was ever expressly included in the right to writ of habeas, so wouldn’t that mean according to the Attorney General, that none of us have the right to begin with? In that case, why would the Constitution expressly prohibit the suspension of a right that no one is even guaranteed in the first place? As was stated so eloquently by Samuel L. Jackson in the film Pulp Fiction, “the absence of evidence, is not the evidence of absence.” Just because no one is specified as to having the right to writ of habeas corpus, does not mean that no one has the right to begin with. In fact, just the opposite is being asserted in the statement in the Constitution. By only stating when the privilege can be taken away, the Constitution creates a basic and logical assumption that the privilege is present in all other occasions without further exception.

Attorney General Gonzales’ testimony in front of the Senate Judicial Committee further solidifies my belief that this administration will assertively attack any type of constitutional privilege that will disallow the regime from doing what it wants. If you did not read the definition of writ of habeas corpus, it is the legal action detainees can take to seek relief from unlawful imprisonment. Now why would the government want to take that away? Wait, unless….no, they can’t possibly want to…. want to unlawfully detain someone. Bingo! Unless the people as a whole realize what is going on, I wouldn’t be surprised if this regime goes so far as to start a war with Iran, North Korea, etc. just to declare a state of emergency and maintain power. Mark my words Big Brother’s coming, then we’ll see how much people start caring about protecting their civil rights.