Know Your Rights - The Military Commissions Act

Our rights are unalienable, and endowed by our creator. It says so in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

Here in the US, we have secured our rights by instituting a Republic whose powers and limitations are defined in the Constitution.

The source of our latest controversy in the War on Terror is that the Congress, at the President's urging, has passed a law, the Military Commissions Act, that in the eyes of many Americans exceeds the limits set by the Constitution. Their beef is that the law defines a class of people, alien unlawful enemy combatants, who don't get the safeguards against Government power that we enjoy.

These people can't go to court to challenge their detention (Habeas Corpus), or get a speedy trial. In fact, they can be held without any kind of hearing, for any length of time, at the Government's discretion. They can be questioned using any kind of technique that the President says is OK, and their interrogators have retroactive immunity from prosecution for what they've done.

I can't get too excited about all this, if it's Khalid Shaikh Mohammed we are talking about, but how about Maher Arar? How many innocent people do we lock away without legal recourse to make sure the bad guys don't walk on a technicality?

That's the question from a legal and political perspective, and we can rely on the courts and elected representatives to sort it out, if we want. Or we can read the law, the Constitution, Supreme Court rulings, legal commentaries, and make up our own minds. It's our choice: the liberal position of preserving civil rights, or the conservative stand of protecting us from terrorists.

However, there is another question to which the positions of left or right, Democrat or Republican, don't apply. If we believe the Declaration of Independence, each of us may one day face alone the creator who made all men equal, and have to answer for allowing our Government to deny the rights of innocents.

What will you say?