Good news and bad news

The good news is that by a vote of 11-8, the Senate Judiciary Committee has passed out the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act, which would repeal part of the heinous Military Commissions Act. Senate majority leader Harry Reid has promised to bring the bill to a vote within the month.

The principle that a prisoner must be held lawfully dates back at least 800 years. It was mentioned in the Magna Carta. It's enshrinement in the UK in the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 is regarded as a milestone in the establishment of legal rights there - and, of course, over 100 years later, the new nation of the United States, drawing on that tradition, made it part of its constitution.

In 1969, in the case Harris v. Nelson, our Supreme Court called habeas corpus "the fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action" which must be "administered with the initiative and flexibility essential to insure that miscarriages of justice within its reach are surfaced and corrected."

That is not an understatement: Without the ability to challenge arbitrary imprisonment, other rights effectively become moot.

So while the bill doesn't go far enough, it is indeed good news that the committee has moved it and that it will soon be brought to the floor, offering the chance to undo some of the damage done.

The bad news is that eight members of the Senate Judiciary Committee of the United States - and we don't yet know how many other members of that august body - are prepared to burn this jewel of protection of liberty on an altar of reactionary paranoia, bigotry, and political pandering. They are, every one of them, disgraces to their offices, their oaths of office, and their country. That they exist is saddening, that there are that many of them (42% of the committee) is frightening.

Thanks to Digby for the link to Chris Dodd's post. Go to FindHabeas.com, a project of the ACLU, for more information and updates.