The Democrat Hall of Shame Awards

CLICK TO READ: t r u t h o u t - Marjorie Cohn: Graham Amendment Invokes Constitutional Crisis

Five Democrat Hall of Shame Awards go to the following for having been the only Democrats to vote in favor of the Graham Amendment:

Joseph Lieberman (Conn.)
Kent Conrad (N.D.)
Ben Nelson (Neb)
Mary L. Landrieu (La)
Ron Wyden (Or)

As Marjory Cohn points out, "Habeas Corpus, known as The Great Writ, is the final bastion of liberty for those unjustly held. The last time this country suspended Habeas Corpus was for the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II. That travesty is now universally recognized as a shameful chapter in our nation's history. To suspend The Great Writ once again, while allegations of systematic torture continue to emerge from US prisons, will threaten our Constitution and render "quaint" our democracy."

For more on this and related subjects:

CLICK TO READ: Justice detained at Guantanamo
"People are trying to kill themselves to get out of custody, because they have no legal recourse. 'They won't let us live, but they won't let us die,' one of our clients explained."

CLICK TO READ: Herald Sun: US refuses to rule out use of torture
"Mr Hadley elaborated on the Bush policy, making clear the White House could see situations where the promise not to torture might not apply."

CLICK TO READ: Jimmy Carter: This isn't the real America - Los Angeles Times
"The U.S. has repudiated the Geneva accords and espoused the use of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and secretly through proxy regimes elsewhere with the so-called extraordinary rendition program. It is embarrassing to see the president and vice president insisting that the CIA should be free to perpetrate "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment" on people in U.S. custody."

CLICK TO READ: CIA allegedly hid evidence of detainee torture - report - Forbes.com
"The death of secret detainee Manadel al-Jamadi was ruled a homicide in a Defense Department autopsy, Time reported, adding that documents it recently obtained included photographs of his battered body, which had been kept on ice to keep it from decomposing, apparently to conceal the circumstances of his death."

CLICK TO READ: The Times Online: America's prisoners in paradise by Margaret Drabble
"Some prisoners, or “illegal combatants”, are on hunger strike: there are allegations of men being shackled and force fed with a brutality that amounts to torture."

CLICK TO READ: Policymakers on torture take note -- remember Pinochet
"Before embarking on international travels, David Addington and others who are said to be closely associated with the crafting of the Bush administration's policy on the interrogation of detainees would do well to reflect on the fate of Augusto Pinochet."

CLICK TO READ: Newsday.com: Who knows on Padilla
"The world has known many nations where soldiers could jack people off the streets and dump them into a black hole of incarceration without charges or trials. It has seen woeful places where people could be branded traitors and denied an opportunity to fight the accusation that officials need never prove. Proudly, for 226 years the United States wasn't one of those nations. Now it is."

CLICK TO READ: Detainees Deserve Court Trials
"Habeas corpus is older than even our Constitution. It is the right to compel the executive to justify itself when it imprisons people. But the Senate voted to abolish it for Adel, in favor of the same 'combatant status review tribunal' that has already exonerated him. That secret tribunal didn't have much impact on his life, but Graham says it is good enough."