The loss of due process is a grave loss. Habaeus corpus protects us from being scooped off the street and held in prison forever. Or, it used to. In a law passed in 2006, the preznit may now declare anyone, for any reason, an "enemy of the state" and habaeus corpus no longer applies for them. . . for you. Perhaps for writing this blog. Perhaps for reading it.

There seems to be a stir about Bill Richardson saying that Human Rights are more important than national security. What the heck is national security? Is it freedom from terrorist attacks? Or is national security freedom to drive over a bridge without fear it will fall? Or is freedom to make a phone call without fear that someone is listening? Is it freedom from hunger? Is it healthcare for children? Is it freedom from fear that we can't pay this money back that the government is spending willy nilly, a few billions on democratic museums and a few trillions on repub wars? (I promise to stop saying repub when the repubs stop saying on TV the democrat congress. It's a slur. They know it. It's just a low key way to show their hatred.) Does national security mean that our borders are sealed and nothing and no one gets in or out without being examined? That ain't gonna happen. Does national security mean that if someone hits us we hit back randomly, ten times harder? I'd think we'd be saying you kill our people and we'll kill yours, but what the preznit says is, you kill our people and we'll kill whoever we want. With all the scandal of the incompetence of this administration, is there any greater than the failure to bring Osama bin Laden to justice? He just sits out there thumbing his nose without so much as a government to protect him. His boys have his back.

Protecting human rights is national security. Protecting habeaus corpus (Magna Carta 1215) is protecting national security. Protecting the world from torture is protecting national security. The Repubs like to pose the scenarios where torture saves the day but I'll tell you it is just rhetoric. I was about 12 when some irreligious kid asked me "Can your God do anything?" I snapped back "Yes," without hesitation only to hear him reply, "Can he make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it?" Torture fails. For every step forward it produces three steps backward. We are spending our capital in all the wrong places. It was the United States that put Saddam Hussein in power. How much investment in him would it have taken to have created an Iraq we could live with, an ally to the United States? My guess is . . . less than trillions.

I say the military action in Iraq must stop now. Make no mistake, there is no war. The war on terror and the war on the drugs are the same--unending, unwinnable political boondoogles. But the military action should end. The money should go to national health care for everyone. We already have national health care for the elderly, the poor, the military, the government. Let's just include everyone like they do in civilized countries.

The preznit and his people have seized and shredded the constitution. We need to put him in prison and put the document back in place.