United Liberty

Two hundred, thirty-three years ago:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…

We all know that the injustice of slavery clouded the reality of these brilliant words. However, years of progress, and certainly the election of Barack Obama, was to set aside such errors and enshrine equality amongst all people of earth. I believe that these “unalienable Rights” are such that no government nor individual can infringe upon these rights as they are natural to all people. These rights, in my mind, involve life, liberty and property. It is arguable whether rights such as that to a writ of habeas corpus or those granted under the Bill of Rights fall under such classification. That question has been one of significant debate in our federal courts over the last several years.

In the aftermath of September 11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush administration notably expanded the interpretation of provisions which excluded such rights. In the Military Commissions Act of 2006, Congress passed legislation which prevented unlawful enemy combatants from submitting a writ of habeas corpus to the federal courts thus restricting such prisoners to legal recourse via a military tribunal. This was challenged in Boumediene v. Bush with the Supreme Court ultimately overturning the provision allowing for Guantanamo detainees to to challenge their detentions in federal court.

In a special podcast, Jason and Brett interview Bob Barr to further explore his thoughts regarding the plan to possibly bring prisoners detained as part of the War on Terror to the United States for trial.

On Monday, former Congressman Barr, along with Grover Norquist and David Keene released a joint statement supporting the proposal.  In the interview, Barr discusses federal prisons, habeas corpus, and indefinite detention of these prisoners.

You can download the podcast here (13 minutes/12 MB). The introduction music is “Easy Skankin’” by Bob Marley, one of the former Congressman’s favorite artists.

You can subscribe to the RSS of JUST our podcasts here, or you can find our podcasts on iTunes here.

I came across an article with a disturbing title, “Cheney: Execute Terrorists If Cuba Prison Must Close”, published by the conservative-leaning online publication Newsmax.

The general rule for me is if Alex Jones says it, don’t take it seriously. And that’s what I said on Thursday to several friends that e-mailed me a link to a story about how the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) basically correlates libertarians and more specifically supporters of Ron Paul, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin, with potentially being a domestic terrorist or member of a militia.

It seems that the wholesale libertarian message doesn’t resonate with the American people. Many liberal Democrats love civil liberties and liberal groups such as the ACLU have been powerful forces for advancing same-sex marriage rights, prisoner rights, free speech and religious freedom. Conservative Republicans don’t so much like the whole civil liberties thing, and, given their blatant corporate advocacy, are no longer legitimate advocates of economic freedom.

The Los Angeles Times ran a stunning piece in this Sunday’s paper detailing the resignation of Lt. Col. Darrel J. Vandeveld, the man who was prosecuting nearly 1/3rd of the pending trials for suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay. Vandeveld, a self described conformist, became disenchanted with “the system” set up in Cuba over issues relating to fairness and lack of due process for the very prisoners he was suppose to prosecute. He lays out accusations of intentional withholding of exculpatory evidence from defense attorneys by military officials, and even goes so far as to say he reached out to a defense attorney to ask “how do I get myself out of this office?”.