When the Military Commissions Act, which among other things suspended habeas corpus for suspected terrorists, went to the Senate floor in September, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) voiced some relatively passive concerns. He offered an amendment that would have protected habeas, which was defeated. Specter didn’t seem terribly concerned about the lack of his amendment — because he voted for the MCA anyway.
During arguments on the Senate floor, however, Specter seemed to realize the obvious legal problems with the bill. He even told his colleagues, “Surely as we are standing here, if this bill is passed and habeas corpus is stricken, we’ll be back on this floor again” after the courts strike the legislation down.
As it turns out, we may not have to wait for the judiciary; Specter is backing a bi-partisan measure to undo some of what he and other Senate Republicans did.
The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee signaled this week that he’ll join prominent Democrats in seeking to restore legal rights to hundreds of suspected terrorists confined at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere.
While the measure to restore the right of habeas corpus has almost no chance of passing before Congress adjourns later this week, the message is clear: When Democrats take over in early January, the issue could resurface.
The Military Commissions Act of 2006, which Bush signed into law in October, prevents detainees who aren’t U.S. citizens from challenging their detentions in civilian courts. But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who voted for the legislation despite his opposition to stripping such rights from detainees, on Tuesday reintroduced legislation to restore those rights.
Good for Arlen. What spurred Specter into action? A recent article from Jeffrey Toobin may have had something to do with it.
A couple of weeks ago, the New Yorker ran a Toobin piece suggesting that Specter believed going along with legislation suspending habeas was his way of making sure he could remain the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee if Republicans held onto their majority.
Of course, the GOP is now in the minority, and with no career motivations in mind, Specter can follow his conscience, at least on this.
“The Constitution of the United States is explicit that habeas corpus may be suspended only in time of rebellion or invasion,” Specter said on the floor. “We are suffering neither of those alternatives at the present time. We have not been invaded, and there has not been a rebellion. That much is conceded.”
His co-sponsor, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who’ll become chairman of the Judiciary Committee when the Democrats take over in January, noted that the effort to secure habeas appeals for all detainees failed by only three votes.
“Since then, the American people have spoken against the administration’s stay- the-course approach to national security and against a rubber-stamp Congress that accommodated this administration’s efforts to grab more and more power,” Leahy said. “Abolishing habeas corpus for anyone who the government thinks might have assisted enemies of the United States is unnecessary and morally wrong. It is a betrayal of the most basic values of freedom for which America stands.”
As we know all too well, Specter has a tendency of saying the right things early on, only to roll over the moment the White House tells him to. This may not happen this time — Specter is in the minority so he has less to lose, and a lame-duck president’s power of persuasion is clearly on the wane. There’s nothing Bush has that Specter wants.
Then again, Bush does that have pesky veto pen….