Ryan Price's Soapbox

For most of you not well versed in law Habeus Corpus is a legal action that allows a prisoner to be released from unlawful detention. An example of this would be prisoners at Guantanamo which are being held there indefinitely and might not be guilty of anything at all which some cases have found. Another use for this albet extreme it’s still plausible. If things were to get out of hand with say the tea party protests, or occupy protests this could be invoked and law enforcement could hold you in jail indefinitely. The only other known time this has ever happened in our history is during the Civil War when southern states were leaving the union about 200 years ago.

They voted for an amendment to the Defense Authorization act, the indefinite suspension of Habeas Corpus. We are now officially a police state. Read the Amendment provision here. The house version of the bill is available here, 920 pages. Senate text is available here and a PDF of the full senate bill is available here, 682 pages. The amendment to the Defense Authorization act (the Udall amendment) would have removed some of the more draconian measures of the bill. To clear up some of the confusion, Sen. Udall was the good guy here.

We need to remember that the text of the bill would have provided issues for people who had not been legally found guilty (no due process), just suspected. If we look back at our recent history, we can see similar legislation being misused to silence political dissidents. Are you calling for the Federal Reserve to be abolished? Are you a John Bircher? Like the Tea Party better than Occupy or vice versa? Who knows how it can be misused. Not trying to be more alarmist than needed, but we do need to remain vigilant. Ignore your rights, and they will go away. I find it oddly coincidental that with the wind down of the Iraq conflict that this would come to light as an possible excuse to hold on to those prisoners in Guantanamo Bay even after the war is over.

Those that voted for this are as follows:

Ayotte (R-NH)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Blunt (R-MO)
Boozman (R-AR)
Brown (R-MA)
Burr (R-NC)
Casey (D-PA)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coats (R-IN)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hagan (D-NC)
Hatch (R-UT)
Heller (R-NV)
Hoeven (R-ND)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Inouye (D-HI)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Johnson (R-WI)
Kohl (D-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lee (R-UT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lugar (R-IN)
Manchin (D-WV)
McCain (R-AZ)
McCaskill (D-MO)
McConnell (R-KY)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Moran (R-KS)
Nelson (D-NE)
Portman (R-OH)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rubio (R-FL)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Shelby (R-AL)
Snowe (R-ME)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Thune (R-SD)
Toomey (R-PA)
Vitter (R-LA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wicker (R-MS)

Looks like we know who to throw out in the next elections now.