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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SiouxPal who wrote (54504)	10/26/2004 2:38:04 AM
From: CalculatedRisk	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 81568

Sioux, last week I gave a talk on economics ... but at the conclusion I finished with something that was inspired by our discussions on this thread. Here was the conclusion to my speech: Now I would like to switch gears and finish with a few comments on civil liberties. In the second debate, Mr Bush said: “I think whoever is the president must guard your liberties, must not erode your rights in America.” George W. Bush Oct 8, 2004 The following week, three women showed up at a Bush rally in Oregon wearing t-shirts that read "Protect Our Civil Liberties." For Americans this is like saying I like Apple pie and mom. Many other people at the rally were wearing t-shirts, mostly saying Bush-Cheney 2004 and other campaign slogans. About 30 minutes before Bush arrived the women were told they had to leave because their t-shirts were obscene. “Protect our civil liberties” is obscene? Maybe this was an overzealous organizer. But let me tell you a story from the NYTimes last week concerning an American named Esam Hamdi. Hamdi was born in Louisiana to Saudi Arabian parents, so he had dual citizenship. In 2001, at the age of 21, he was studying marketing in Saudi Arabia. That summer he decided to take a year off from school and study religion in Afghanistan. In retrospect, a poorly timed decision. After the invasion of Afghanistan, Hamdi was captured by a local warlord and turned over to our forces. Maybe Hamdi is a bad guy, maybe not. But he is a US citizen and he was designated an “enemy combatant” by Mr. Bush. He was held in Guantánamo for almost three years without access to his lawyers or to see his family. In effect, his right of habeas corpus was suspended. This is a basic right of all Americans. Hamdi was recently released and is now in Saudi Arabia. He was forced to renounce his US citizenship without any charges ever being filed. This raises the question: What is America? Is it a geographical location on map? Or is it something more. To me, America is that and much more. America is an idea. America is the rule of law and our civil liberties as embodied in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. America is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. America is still Jefferson’s shining beacon on the hill; an example to the World. In America, Esam Hamdi’s rights are as important as my own. That is my America.