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Habeus Corpus

The Magna Carta and Habeus Corpus

Submitted by Roanman on Sun, 01/01/2012 - 08:01

 

“The doctrine of habeas corpus goes back to before the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. 

It [Magna Carta] was an ancient Anglo-Saxon limitation on the power of government. If the feds held a prisoner, a writ of habeas corpus required them to ‘produce the body.’ The government had to either release the person or charge him with a crime. For more than 800 years, this gave people some protection against government.

But now, in the Year of Our Lord 2011, the Congress of the United States of America, with the complicity of POTUS, himself, has seen fit to deny the right of habeas corpus to American citizens.

Henceforth, the feds can capture you, put you in prison and waterboard you every day for the rest of your life. 

They don’t have to charge you with murder or jay-walking or any crime at all. They don’t have to let you talk to a lawyer. Or to your spouse. Or to your Congressman.

They don’t have to read you your rights or provide any evidence against you. Like the Argentines in the ’80s, they just ‘disappear’ you. And you’re gone forever…

We’re talking about American citizens who can be taken from the United States and sent to a camp at Guantánamo Bay and held indefinitely. 

It puts every single citizen American at risk.

Really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us?

The first and flawed premise, both here and in the badly named Patriot Act, is that our pre-9/11 police powers were insufficient to stop terrorism.

So now the feds, whose salaries we pay, can spy on us with drones we paid for too.

They can send a swat team to disappear us ... and keep us in prison.

The genius of modern democracy is that it makes the citizen a party to his own enslavement.

Rather than give up 10% of his output to his feudal lord and master, he gives up 30% to 50% to his democratically-elected bosses.

They tell him what to do. And he believes he is giving the orders!”

Bill Bonner 12/20/2011

 

Click anywhere above for the entire Bill Bonner piece title "Power Corrupts"

Click on the above photo for a very quick and simple site on the Magna Carta.

 

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