Human Rights

The Senate has voted 65-34 in favor of S. 3930, “A bill to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes.” Here, “trial by military commission” means that, if you are an unlawful enemy combatant, you have no right to a trial by your peers or any other basic protections of the Bill of Rights. (Who counts as an “enemy combatant”? Whomever the government says. Even U.S. citizens who haven’t even left the country, much less engaged in combat? Yes.) And “other purposes” means torturing people.

I remember when Republicans used to look at government with suspicion. Now the motto of the Republican Party is “Trust us, we’re the government, we know what’s best and we don’t make mistakes.”

I have nothing to add to the discussion that hasn’t been said by more expert people elsewhere. I just wanted it on record, if the internet archives last a thousand years and I’ve been cryogenically preserved for the same length of time, that I was one of the substantial number of people who thought the bill was repulsive and anti-democratic. It will go down in history as one of those sad moments when a basically good nation does something that makes later generations look back and think, “What made them go so crazy?”

I can just quote other people. Jack Balkin:

The current bill, if passed [as it just was], will give the Executive far more dictatorial powers to detain, prosecute, judge and punish than it ever enjoyed before. Over the last 48 hours, it has been modified in a hundred different ways to increase executive power at the expense of judicial review, due process, and oversight. And what is more, the bill’s most outrageous provisions on torture, definition of enemy combatants, secret procedures, and habeas stripping, are completely unnecessary to keep Americans safe. Rather, they are the work of an Executive branch that has proven itself as untrustworthy as it is greedy: always pushing the legal and constitutional envelope, always seeking more power and less accountability.

Almost all the Republican Senators, of course, voted for the bill, Lincoln Chafee being the lone honorable exception. As Glenn Greenwald notes,

During the debate on his amendment, Arlen Specter said that the bill sends us back 900 years because it denies habeas corpus rights and allows the President to detain people indefinitely. He also said the bill violates core Constitutional protections. Then he voted for it.

Most Democrats were against (although not all, sadly). Hillary Clinton:

The rule of law cannot be compromised. We must stand for the rule of law before the world, especially when we are under stress and under threat. We must show that we uphold our most profound values…

The bill before us allows the admission into evidence of statements derived through cruel, inhuman and degrading interrogation. That sets a dangerous precedent that will endanger our own men and women in uniform overseas. Will our enemies be less likely to surrender? Will informants be less likely to come forward? Will our soldiers be more likely to face torture if captured? Will the information we obtain be less reliable? These are the questions we should be asking. And based on what we know about warfare from listening to those who have fought for our country, the answers do not support this bill. As Lieutenant John F. Kimmons, the Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence said, “No good intelligence is going to come from abusive interrogation practices.”…

This bill undermines the Geneva Conventions by allowing the President to issue Executive Orders to redefine what permissible interrogation techniques happen to be. Have we fallen so low as to debate how much torture we are willing to stomach? By allowing this Administration to further stretch the definition of what is and is not torture, we lower our moral standards to those whom we despise, undermine the values of our flag wherever it flies, put our troops in danger, and jeopardize our moral strength in a conflict that cannot be won simply with military might.

Russ Feingold:

Habeas corpus is a fundamental recognition that in America, the government does not have the power to detain people indefinitely and arbitrarily. And that in America, the courts must have the power to review the legality of executive detention decisions.

Habeas corpus is a longstanding vital part of our American tradition, and is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

As a group of retired judges wrote to Congress, habeas corpus “safeguards the most hallowed judicial role in our constitutional democracy — ensuring that no man is imprisoned unlawfully.”

Mr. President, this bill would fundamentally alter that historical equation. Faced with an executive branch that has detained hundreds of people without trial for years now, it would eliminate the right of habeas corpus.

But words are cheap, and nobody stepped up to filibuster the bill. Democrats, as usual, put their fingers to the wind and decide to be spineless. The calculation seems to be that they won’t look sufficiently tough if they come out strongly against torture. They don’t get it. “Tough” means that you stand up for what you believe in, and that you’re willing to fight for it if necessary. How are you supposed to keep the country safe when you’re afraid to stand up to demagoguing Republicans? People know this, which is why it’s been so easy to paint Democrats as weak.

The “tough” stance of the Bush administration has taken Iraq, a country that formerly opposed al-Qaeda, and turned one-third of it over to al-Qaeda, in the process fueling Islamic radicalism and making the threat of terrorism significantly worse. If that’s what you get from “tough,” I’ll stick with “smart” and “principled” any day.

Immigration has been in the news quite a bit recently, as certain political factions (we are so fair and balanced that we won’t say which ones) are looking to score some cheap points at the expense of immigrants. They will even go so far as to deploy the National Guard at our border with Mexico, since those Guard folks have more or less been sitting around with nothing to do for the last three years.

Alex Tabarrok, who blogs at Marginal Revolution, is attempting to inject some facts into the debate. He is basically libertarian/conservative himself, but there is consensus among economists from either side of the political spectrum on the basic realities of immigration, and he has written an open letter to the President and Congress urging them to take these realties into account. It’s been signed by professional social scientists of all political persuasions (including Brad DeLong on the left); if there are any experts reading, they are welcome to sign it themselves.

Dear President George W. Bush and All Members of Congress:

People from around the world are drawn to America for its promise of freedom and opportunity. That promise has been fulfilled for the tens of millions of immigrants who came here in the twentieth century.

Throughout our history as an immigrant nation, those who are already here worry about the impact of newcomers. Yet, over time, immigrants have become part of a richer America, richer both economically and culturally. The current debate over immigration is a healthy part of a democratic society, but as economists and other social scientists we are concerned that some of the fundamental economics of immigration are too often obscured by misguided commentary.

Overall, immigration has been a net gain for existing American citizens, though a modest one in proportion to the size of our 13 trillion-dollar economy.

Immigrants do not take American jobs. The American economy can create as many jobs as there are workers willing to work so long as labor markets remain free, flexible and open to all workers on an equal basis.

Immigration in recent decades of low-skilled workers may have lowered the wages of domestic low-skilled workers, but the effect is likely to be small, with estimates of wage reductions for high-school dropouts ranging from eight percent to as little as zero percent.

While a small percentage of native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration, vastly more Americans benefit from the contributions that immigrants make to our economy, including lower consumer prices. As with trade in goods and services, the gains from immigration outweigh the losses. The effect of all immigration on low-skilled workers is very likely positive as many immigrants bring skills, capital and entrepreneurship to the American economy.

Legitimate concerns about the impact of immigration on the poorest Americans should not be addressed by penalizing even poorer immigrants. Instead, we should promote policies, such as improving our education system that enables Americans to be more productive with high-wage skills.

We must not forget that the gains to immigrants from coming to the United States are immense. Immigration is the greatest anti-poverty program ever devised. The American dream is a reality for many immigrants who not only increase their own living standards but who also send billions of dollars of their money back to their families in their home countries—a form of truly effective foreign aid..

America is a generous and open country and these qualities make America a beacon to the world. We should not let exaggerated fears dim that beacon.

One of my earliest childhood memories was going up to strangers at our local polling place in 1972 and trying to convince them to vote for Richard Nixon. My family was always staunchly conservative, and the notion of voting for a Democrat was anathema; my six-year-old self went along enthusiastically. (Nixon vs. McGovern was not a close election, so I doubt that my efforts made a difference in the ultimate outcome.)

Myself excluded, my family’s allegiance to Republicans has never waned. The only exception (that I know of) was in the 1990’s when my Mom confessed the possibility that she might vote for Bill Clinton. When I asked why, she gave a simple answer: he was in favor of abortion rights, and she thought that was really important. Now, my Mom was certainly not in a position where she would worry about the prospect of getting an abortion for her own sake, and she has long been the kind of person who uses “feminist” as a slightly disreputable epithet. But this one issue was important enough to her to call into question a lifelong loyalty to Republicans. The reason is simple enough: as a woman, she understood the potentially life-altering consequences of an unwanted pregnancy, and felt that it was crucial to protect other women’s right to avoid that possibility, even if it wasn’t relevant to her own situation.

I bring this up not to explain why abortion rights are important (although they are), but to make a more narrowly political point: fighting to protect such rights is not a losing move for the Democratic party. (To a large extent I don’t care about the political ramifications, as I am happy to support wildly unpopular positions when I think they are important, but sometimes what is right actually aligns with what is popular, and why not take advantage?) Guys tend to not quite appreciate how important the right to choose really is to women, and they also tend to forget that women are a large fraction of the voting public, including a lot of Republican voters. As the Alito nomination moves us just a little closer to eroding the right to choose, this issue is going to loom increasingly larger in voters’ minds. Rather than validating centrist bona fides by prevaricating on the issue of abortion, Democrats should be proudly emphasizing that they are the party of choice — a lot of suburban swing voters might actually move their way.

This is also Blog for Choice month. More details here.

Just to make things clear. The United States now has a policy, referred to euphemistically as simply “rendition,” of flying terror suspects to foreign countries to torture them.

We aren’t sorry about it.

Even though it doesn’t work.

Many of the countries in which the torture is carried out are in Eastern Europe. Indeed, we have adopted a great deal of the old apparatus of Soviet imperialism.

It is often the case that the people being tortured are completely innocent.

“They picked up the wrong people, who had no information. In many, many cases there was only some vague association” with terrorism, one CIA officer said.”

There was a time, not too long ago, when we thought we had evolved beyond such behavior. Apparently not.