POLITICS - Retrospect, Gonzo World

Ahhhh, now that he is fading into the sunset.......

"Favorite Memory: Gonzo on Habeas" by Robert Parry, Consortium News

Excerpt

But my personal favorite was his insistence that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t expressly recognize habeas corpus, the great fair-trial principle of English law that dates back to the Magna Carta in 1215.

“There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution,” Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 18. He did acknowledge, however, that there was “a prohibition against taking it away.”

Gonzales’s bizarre remark left Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a former federal prosecutor and the panel’s ranking Republican, sputtering in disbelief.

“Wait a minute,” Specter interjected. “The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”

Gonzales continued, “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” except in cases of rebellion or invasion.

“You may be treading on your interdiction of violating common sense,” Specter responded, as if confronting the sophomoric comments of a first-year law student who would never make it to a second year.

While the exchange drew little or no attention in the major news media, I found it revealing in several ways:

First, it exposed the narrow, ideological thinking that has pervaded the legal analysis of Gonzales and other Bush administration lawyers.

Neoconservative and right-wing legal operatives have long functioned with the notion that if they could conjure up a clever legal argument – no matter how flimsy – that their argument must be accepted as sound or at least treated with the utmost seriousness. If we can divine a rationale, we must be right.

That self-absorbed thinking has been at the core of the legal theories behind George W. Bush’s treatment of profound issues such as presidential power, government secrecy, and limitations on the inalienable rights of individuals who are not in Bush’s inner circle.

So, no matter how established habeas corpus might be in American legal traditions, Gonzales felt he could put it in question simply with the nit-picking observation that the Founders didn't explicitly spell out the Great Writ when writing the Constitution.

Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution states that “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.”

The clear meaning of the clause, as interpreted for more than two centuries, is that the Founders recognized the long-established English principle of habeas corpus, which guarantees people the right of due process, such as formal charges and a fair trial.

However, under Gonzales’s constitutional theory not only would habeas corpus not be guaranteed, the American people also would have no assurances about freedom of religion, speech or the press. In the Bill of Rights, all those rights are defined in negative language: “Congress shall make no law …”

There's much more in the full article
Bold emphasis mine

Gonzo sure didn't get the schooling I got. That's where I learned the fundamental difference between a free society and a totalitarian one.

• Totalitarian Society: Citizens cannot do anything unless it is granted by the government


• Free Society: Anyone can do anything not forbidden by law

By Gonzo's logic, America is a Totalitarian Society, we have no Constitutional rights because they are not specifically granted.

I thank "God the Emperor Bush" enabler is going, going, and finally gone. This troglodyte should not be allowed to practice law in America. We should ship him to a country of another dictator to practice there. Like North Korea.