Maybe a period of stark repression will be a rich and rewarding experience for all of us. Who needs habeas corpus anyway? By Garrison Keillor -- Salon
Oct. 25, 2006 -- We are engaged in a struggle between freedom and the forces of terror, my little macacas, and mostly I side with freedom, such as the freedom to look at big shots and stick out your tongue and blow, but of course terror has its place too. The dude strolling down our street at night does not break into our house to see what's available because he is terrified that if he's nabbed, his girlfriend Janine will run off to Philly with her ex-boyfriend Eddie who's been hanging around. She's the best thing in Benny's life right now. So he walks on by and leaves our stereo be.
The terror of everlasting hellfire kept me away from dances until I was 12 years old and away from smoking cigarettes until I was 15. So that's good. Dancing was briefly thrilling, and then I caught sight of myself in a mirror and I haven't gone to a dance since. Fear of ridicule is powerful too. A lack of terror may encourage crooks to operate brazenly, knock over the candy stand, trip the nuns, hurl garbage over the balcony, and that's why you have cops, and also to keep the college kids from getting sick in our shrubbery.
But now the federal government is extending the frontiers of terror with the Military Commissions Act, legalizing torture and suspending habeas corpus and constructing a loose web of law by which you and I could be hung by our ankles in a meat locker for as long as somebody deems necessary. "Any person is punishable ..." the law states, "who knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States" and when it comes to deciding what "knowingly and intentionally" might mean or who is the enemy, that's for a military commission to decide in secret, with or without you present. No Fifth Amendment, hearsay evidence admissible, no judicial review.
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READ MORE: Salon.com
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