Fixing the Military Commissions Act

November 16, 2006

Guest Post by Anonymous Liberal

According to The Hill, there may be a move underway to try to undo some of the damage caused by the Military Commissions Act which the President signed into law in October:

Gearing up for a major clash with the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress, several key Senate Democrats are planning to overhaul the newly minted legislation governing military tribunals of detainees. . . .

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who is running for president and who, come January, will be the second ranking Democrat on the International Relations Committee, introduced legislation today that would amend the existing law.

Dodd said he’s expecting the legislation to be taken up early next year. “The bill goes back and undoes what was done,” Dodd told The Hill. . . .

Dodd is the first Democrat to take aim at the controversial military tribunals bill. But Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the incoming Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, also said that he is in the process of drafting “major changes” to the legislation.

Good for Leahy and Dodd. It’s nice to know that at least a few members of Congress understand how truly pernicious and un-American that law is.

Some perspective is warranted here, though. Even if Dodd and Leahy are able to push through this sort of corrective legislation (and get the House to follow suit), President Bush will never sign it, not in a million years. He would veto any such bill, and not only that, he would invite the entire press corps over to the White House to watch him do it, and would issue a statement accusing the Democratic Congress of trying to grant rights to terrorists.

Don’t get me wrong. I still think Dodd and Leahy should do whatever they can, especially given the very real possibility that various provisions of the Military Commissions Act will be struck down by the courts over the next two years, but it’s important to keep expectations in check. Until Bush leaves office, there is very little progress that can be made on this front, at least without the courts intervening first.

absolutely they should do it, and dare the little prick to veto it. his support is so weak, his failures so obvious, that other than the hardcore 1/3 who will support him to the bitter end, people will ignore such a statement.

as has been discussed ad nauseum here in the blogosphere for quite a while now, the way for the dems to look strong is to stand up for their beliefs….

  • Just to be clear, I’m not worried about the optics of trying to pass such a bill. I don’t think the terrorist-supporter accusation works very well anymore. But Bush still holds the veto pen, and he’s going to protect the Military Commissions Act from amendment at all costs. I guarantee you.

  • Let him protect it all he wants – it further educates the majority of Americans as to what an ignorant shit he is, and what a bunch of pigs his party is. Every time Bush is Bush from here to 2008 is another million votes to send the Republican Party back under their rocks in Okeefenokee Swamp where they belong.

  • What we need to keep pouning home on this is that it isn’t just terrorists. This affects you and I and your children and neighbors. No one is safe from this act.

  • This is an encouraging sign from Dodd and Leahy, but I also hope that they will challenge the secretly signed “John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007,” which effectively transfers control of the National Guard to the preznit and SOD, thus allowing him to declare martial law whenever he sees “fit.” Though the MCA is certainly pernicious and warrants repeal, this under the table act Shrub signed makes me shudder even more. I’ve been expecting Shrub to pull something along these lines for quite some time, and now that he has it on the books, I don’t think it would surprise anyone to see him try to flex his power on this one. Perhaps some astute governors can speak out on this one (since it effectively thwarts their constitutional right/duty to control the National Guard) and play the states’ rights card and get this off the books. No matter how you look at it, these two acts are clearly intended to drive a stake into the heart of the constitution and the bill of rights … can the jack boots be far behind if these stand? I, for one, am not so confident the courts will strike them down, but we’ll see what happens if Dodd’s bill doesn’t make it through.

  • They should most definitely push this bill. Force the little tyrant to veto it. The Dems should also draft and submit a bill to revise the shiddy bank/finance/credit company protection act, er, the bankruptcy bill, to include common sense protections for Americans, including the prohibition of predatory lending practices. Let the GOP members vote against it and let Bush veto that as well. These are winners for the Dems. They can even be presented as doing Jebus’s work to protect the poor, suffering and those who have had the unfortunate luck to have suffered untimely and costly medical conditions.

  • Anonymous liberal or anyone else – how many votes how many votes do you need to “veto-proof” a bill? Is it 60 or 67? That would be one way to pass this bill, by garnering groundswell support.

    But I don’t see even even Hillary Clinton voting for the amendment – she supports the morally flawed & outrageous “ticking time bomb scenario.”

    I think members should vote their conscience on the bill anyway. At least as Sen. Feingold said, you can tell your grandkids “where you were” when America repealed the Magna Carta AND the Geneva Conventions in one bill.

  • Does anybody understand why Bush pushed the bill in the first place?

    MY EXPLANATION: In order to avoid another “9/11” and kill chances of re-election in 2004, Cheney persuaded Bush for the need to illegally and covertly (unseen by the FISA court) spy on the American people. The legislation is nothing more than a cover-up to the illegal spying–and torture–and anything else that would loosen their grip on power–the Constitution be damned. Why else was the FISA law and the FISA court not workable to Bush and Cheney?

  • Fixing the Military Commissions Act should give Dems a public forum for explaining how un-American, unnecessary and non-productive and generally unwise the R’s simplistic and reactionary approach to terrorism has been. Let Bush veto it and repeat his hair-brained, paranoid, authoritarian arguments. Just make sure he’s on the defensive when he does it.

  • AL, I love it when you cover this topic, as I think its probably the most crucial part of the long list of Bushco crimes. A few things:

    1.Absolutely Dodd and Leahy should press this hard. As someone else suggested earlier, DARE Bush to Veto it, hold a press conference the day before it hits his desk and frame the issue as “What is the president afraid of? If he’s NOT DOING ANYTHING WRONG WHY NOT SIGN IT” , make it look like he’s a coward/criminal for vetoing it. The press these days are more sympathetic to showing Bush as the problem.

    2.If all else fails, hopefully 2008 yields a Dem president, The Hague indicts Bush+Cheney, and we turn them over and laugh as a bunch of “yellow-belly Europeans” prosecute the living shit of them. I dont care about impeachment, this isnt a political issue to me, Bush and Cheney AUTHORIZED TORTURE IN OUR NAME, they need to be criminally punished on the world stage.

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