Jack & Jill Politics

That’s what the Bush Adminstration wants to do. Apparently the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights are too limiting for this “new” war on terrorism. (The terrorism happened 5 years ago. We have not been directly attacked since. What’s so new, exactly?) Bush doesn’t like it — it leaves many of his activities somewhat extra-legal and possibly impeachable. Time to flip the script!

So far the Black and Latino politically-oriented blogs have been silent on the Detainee Bill being debated in the House and Senate unlike many other bloggers. That’s mighty strange. I too was reluctant to write about it. Why? Because it scares me to death. Barack Obama himself had to be poked and prodded into saying something.

Minorities will be targeted under this new and improved “interpretation” of the Constitution. Rest assured that it will be predominantly minorities who are detained indefinitely and tortured with no legal recourse available to defend themselves. Most at risk: American Muslims and anyone who looks like they might be or know a Muslim. “Sympathizers” — uh, that means you, white people — will also be targeted.

According to the Justice Policy Institute, which advocates a more lenient system of punishment, the United States has a higher rate of incarceration than any other country, followed by Britain, China, France, Japan and Nigeria.

There were 726 inmates for every 100,000 U.S. residents by June 30, 2004, compared with 716 a year earlier, according to the report by the Justice Department agency. In 2004, one in every 138 U.S. residents was in prison or jail; the previous year it was one in every 140.

In 2004, 61% of prison and jail inmates were of racial or ethnic minorities, the government said. An estimated 12.6% of all black men in their late 20s were in jails or prisons, as were 3.6% of Hispanic men and 1.7% of white men in that age group, the report said.

(Source: USAToday)

I almost can’t believe it’s happening. After all President Bush has done. After the many false and dangerous paths he has led the nation down, why now give him even more power? How about more oversight over where the money for the Iraq war is going, over why the Taliban are coming back into power, over why Osama Bin Laden is still at large. I could go on.

It is a new level of cowardice for anyone to think that turning away from our historic leadership on human rights and civil rights, that turning toward the type of tactics employed by the very dictatorship we have sacrificed so many lives to unseat will do us any good. It will not save us from terrorism. It will only turn us into the enemy we fear most.