Habeas corpus has been on my mind lately.

It's frustrating to see how few Americans know about this right and the way that our current president has worked to reduce our access to this. People tend to think of this as some tricky legal maneuver abused by prisoners or something. It's actually the most important check on police powers. You see, if we agree that the very fact of liberty is the most basic right, then we have to agree that the power to take that away is the most dangerous of all powers. This is the power of arrest.

The most important check on the power of arrest is habeas corpus (Latin for "show the body", loosely translated) because it's the right we all have to demand that a neutral party, namely a judge, decide that the arrest was legal and proper. Without this protection, the government can arrest and detain you, me, or anybody and leave us in jail as long as they like without trying us for a crime--or even charging us. With the prisoners that the United States has captured in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, the president and his team have commanded that they be held without serious judicial review in Guantanamo Bay military facility. He then argues three things to keep the prisoners:

1. They received judicial review.
2. They are not in the United States, so US law does not apply to them.
3. They are not Americans and therefore aren't eligible for the protection of our laws.

Boy, this is a big load of fertilizer.

Received judicial review? Well, technically true. The prisoners (or detainees, as the administration would like you to call them--it sounds less cruel) went before military judges--who work for the president. These are not neutral jurists. They serve at the pleasure of the president and are not truly part of the independent federal judiciary. It's like the policeman who arrested you got to hire, train, and pay the judge who decides if the arrest was fair. There was no serious judicial review.

Not in the United States? Why? because Cuba isn't a state and Guantanamo Bay is part of Cuba? Again, this is technically true. But this is clearly a case of "extraterritoriality", like embassies. The Cuban government exercises no control over that base--in fact, they're hostile to the USA. The base is wholly controlled and maintained by the US military, clearly an extension of the federal government and commanded by the president. This is another fiction based on the thinnest of technicalities. If a person were to land at Guantanamo and murder a civilian, for example, they would be arrested and tried by the US government, either military or civilian courts. It's insincere fantasy at best to claim this isn't the United States.

Non-Americans don't get access to real habeas corpus relief? So, the president is claiming that this is not a human right like, say, free speech or free exercise of religion? So liberty itself isn't an inalienable right? Has he read the Declaration of Independence? And how can he be taken seriously in a place like the Arab world when he claims to want to bring them Democracy, but won't acknowledge that liberty itself is a basic foundation of the rights Democracy brings?

It just sickens me. This is only different in degree from the "Dirty War" in Argentina, where rightist members of the government could "disappear" people without trial, executing them as they pleased. I'm not sure Senators McCain, Clinton, or Obama understand the urgency of righting these egregious abuses. The administration has even tried to label American citizens arrested inside the United States as "enemy combatants" and avoid habeas corpus. Why is it reasonable to think his people will stop?

CDs listened to today:

• Cure: Wild Mood Swings
• Remy Shand: The Way I Feel
• Frederic Chopin: Polonaises, disk 1
• Green Day: Dookie
• Ingram Marshall: Hymnodic Delays
• Sofia Gubaidulina: Seven Words for Cello, Bayan and Strings
• The La's: (eponymous)
• Kenny Wheeler: Music For Large & Small Ensembles, disk 1