A shameful retreat from American values



I would not send my college kid off for a semester abroad if I were you.
This week, we have suspended human rights in America, and what goes around
comes around. Ixnay habeas corpus.

The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor and majesty, has decided that an
"enemy combatant" is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy
combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish grandmother or
your Czech au pair, and can be arrested and held for as long as authorities
wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to examine the matter.

If your college kid were to be arrested in Bangkok or Cairo, suspected of
"crimes against the state," and held in prison, you'd assume that an
American foreign service officer would be able to speak to your kid and
arrange for a lawyer, but this may not be true anymore. Be forewarned.

The Senate also decided it's up to the president to decide whether it's OK
to make these enemies stand naked in cold rooms for a couple days in
blinding light and be beaten by interrogators. This is now purely a
bureaucratic matter: The plenipotentiary stamps the file "enemy combatants"
and throws the poor schnooks into prison, and at his leisure he tries them
by any sort of kangaroo court he wishes to assemble, and they have no right
to see the evidence against them, and there is no appeal.

This was passed by 65 senators and will now be signed by Mr. Bush, put into
effect, and in due course be thrown out by the courts.

It's good that Barry Goldwater is dead because this would have killed him.
Go back to the Senate of 1964 -- Goldwater, Dirksen, Russell, McCarthy,
Javits, Morse, Fulbright -- and you won't find more than 10 votes for it.

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in
public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the
Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Idea. Mark their names.
Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees to these
people forfeits its honor. Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond,
Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran,
Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici,
Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison,
Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott,
Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, Nelson of Florida,
Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts, Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum,
Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter, Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent,
Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich, Warner.

To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott: Mark their names and mark them well. For
them, no minstrel raptures swell. High though their titles, proud their
name, boundless their wealth as wish can claim, these wretched figures
shall go down to the vile dust from whence they sprung, unwept, unhonored
and unsung.

Three Republican senators made a show of opposing the bill and after they'd
collected all the praise they could get, they quickly folded. Why be a hero
when you can be fairly sure that the Supreme Court will dispose of this
piece of garbage?

If, however, the Supreme Court does not, then our country has taken a step
toward totalitarianism. If the government can round up someone and never be
required to explain why, then it's no longer the United States of America
as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their
wildest dreams. They have made us become like them.

I got some insight last week into who supports torture when I went down to
Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church. It was spooky. I walked
in, was met by two burly security men with walkie-talkies, and within 10
minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes' church and that
it would be better if I didn't talk about politics. I was there on a book
tour for "Homegrown Democrat," but they thought it better if I didn't
mention it. So I tried to make light of it: I told the audience, "I don't
need to talk politics. I have no need even to be interested in politics --
I'm a citizen, I have plenty of money and my grandsons are at least 12
years away from being eligible for military service." And the audience
applauded. Those were their sentiments exactly. We've got ours, and who
cares?

The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be
snatched off the streets, flown to Guantanamo, stripped naked, forced to
stand for 48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise, so why should
they worry? It's only the Jews who are in danger, and the homosexuals and
gypsies. The Christians are doing just fine. If you can't trust a Methodist
with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can
you trust?

(Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights
on public radio stations across the country.)

(c) 2006 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved.

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