Live from the Nuke Free Zone

Pesky litle things. You think you’ve got them safely tucked away and they skitter off if you don’t keep an eye on them. Some recent developmens in Congress have displayed a variety of interesting visions of the law and its relationship to citizens’ lives.

The House is trying to bring back double jeopardy by declaring that if a terrorist on trial is convicted, then escapes the death penalty, the prosecutor can impanel a new sentencing jury and try again for the death penalty unless the decision against was unanimous. To see, go to thomas.loc.gov and search for the text of H.R.3199, then check out Title II — “Terrorist Death Penalty Enhancemement” — and see Subtitle C, Section 231, clause (f).

Somebody’s seriously missing the point. Tell me, why do we default to not imposing the death penalty if we can’t get a jury to agree unanimously? Because killing people is bad, and not something we want to do if there is any doubt, because it can’t be undone. This essentially makes death require nothing more than a majority vote from the jury pool, since the tries keep going until there is a unanious verdict one way or the other. Presuming the jury pool to be large and split, the unanimous jury likely to be picked first is the one represented by the majority. The provision basically lowers the bar to “7 of 12 jurors, or 6 plus a maybe.” It embodies a disrespect for human life and a tyranny of the majority in its most irrevocable form.

(”Death Penalty Enhancement.” Great, the House of Representatives wants our national policy to be based on “kill him a lot.”)

From the Senate, we have a mixed bag. Much in the news recently has been Senator John McCain’s amendment, simply and aptly titled “PROHIBITION ON CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT OF PERSONS UNDER CUSTODY OR CONTROL OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT,” which seeks to, well, prohibit cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons in custody of the United States Government.

It’s sad that this is news.

I’d like to live in a country where normal people take it for granted that we shouldn’t do that kind of thing. If there’s a law to that effect, it should have been one of those unanimous “Mothers and apple pie are good” resolutions that passed unanimously. 9 Senators voted against the amendment. I encourage voters in their home states to electorally punish:

Republican Senator Allard, Colorado
Republican Senator Bond, Missouri
Republican Senator Coburn, Oklahoma
Republican Senator Inhofe, Oklahoma (What is in the water in that state?)
Republican Senator Cochran, Mississippi
Republican Senator Roberts, Kansas
Republican Senator Sessions, Alabama
Republican Senator Stevens, Alaska
Republican Senator Cornyn, Texas (Hi John! I’m coming home quick as I can.)

I also wish I lived in a country where the Vice President wasn’t explicitly pushing for an exception, just this once, oh please, oh please, just for the CIA, and the President, I kid you not, threatened to veto the military spending bill to which the amendment was attached. What part of “torture is bad” is the foreign concept here? The executive branch isn’t even trying to defend its actions as necessary exceptions to a general rule; it’s positively conveying an unseemly eagerness to engage in torture.

Oddly, though McCain’s amendment passed overwhelmingly in the Senate (and now faces pressure to be removed in conference with the House version, though it looks like it won’t be), a recent follow-up by Sen. Graham (S.C.) to gut detainees’ procedures for redress also passed. The very recent amendment, to which I can’t provide a link yet due to thomas’ limitations (once it is up, it will be S.AMDT.2516 ), forbids detainees from suing in court to claim that the review procedures violate or deny them their civil liberties; they can only challenge on the basis of whether the procedures are being followed. In other words, if the procedure itself reeks of banana-republic tyranny, there’s nothing the detainee could do about it.

This was on more of a party line vote, with most Republicans (including Senator McCain) voting yes, and most Democrats voting no. An exception was Republican Senator Sepecter of Pennsylvania, who voted no. Senator Specter chairs the Judiciary Committee and might have been considered by his colleagues to have some expertise in the matter.

IGraham’s amendment is the latest in a long line of Republican bills that seek to reduce the courts to mere law clerks keeping track of the paperwork resulting from legislative and executive acts. The current Congress has long openly expressed its wish that courts would stop being so uppity and quit striking down Congress’ lovingly crafted laws because of piddly things like constitutionality and civil liberties.

f both amendments pass, anyone the United States is torturing would be in the curious position of having their treatment be illegal under the laws of the land, but being without recourse to the courts to protest that this was so. Gosh, I’d like to live in a sane country again.