HABEAS CORPUS (1787-2006)

In October, as President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, 200 members of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture protested in front of the White House against what they called the “death of civil liberties” (apparently without the benefit of spellcheck). When they tried to deliver a statement rejecting the act as a gross violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, 16 were arrested. Amnesty International warned that the act “threatens to deprive an unknown number of U.S.-held ‘war on terror’ detainees held in U.S. custody of fundamental safeguards against human rights violations, and to facilitate impunity for such violations.”