Civil Liberties, Health Care, Food Policies

Supreme Court Guts Due Process Protection

December 20, 2009

Naked Capitalism - Anyone who is arbitrarily declared a “suspected enemy combatant” by the president or his designated minions is no longer a “person.”

Reader Walter passed along this distressing sighting from Chris Floyd’s blog. American civil liberties were gutted last week, and the media failed to take note of it.

The development? If the president or one of his subordinates declares someone to be an “enemy combatant” (the 21st century version of “enemy of the state”) he is denied any protection of the law. So any trouble-maker (which means anyone) can be whisked away, incarcerated, tortured, “disappeared,” you name it. Floyd’s commentary:

After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president’s fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a “suspected enemy combatant” by the president or his designated minions is no longer a “person.” They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever — save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.

It is hard to overstate the significance of this horrid decision. The fact that the Supreme Court authorized this land grab says we no longer have an independent judiciary, that the Supreme Court itself is gutting the protections supposedly provided by the legal system. Per Floyd:

In fact, our most august defenders of the Constitution did not have to exert themselves in the slightest to eviscerate not merely 220 years of Constitutional jurisprudence but also centuries of agonizing effort to lift civilization a few inches out of the blood-soaked mire that is our common human legacy. They just had to write a single sentence.

Now Floyd saw this mainly as an issue of the treatment of enemy combatants and Obama hypocrisy about torture, which is bad enough:

The Constitution is clear: no person can be held without due process; no person can be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. And the U.S. law on torture of any kind is crystal clear: it is forbidden, categorically, even in time of “national emergency.” And the instigation of torture is, under U.S. law, a capital crime. No person can be tortured, at any time, for any reason, and there are no immunities whatsoever for torture offered anywhere in the law.

And yet this is what Barack Obama — who, we are told incessantly, is a super-brilliant Constitutional lawyer — has been arguing in case after case since becoming president: Torturers are immune from prosecution; those who ordered torture are immune from prosecution… let’s be absolutely clear: Barack Obama has taken the freely chosen, public, formal stand — in court — that there is nothing wrong with any of these activities.

Yves here. The implications are FAR worse. Anyone can be stripped, with NO RECOURSE, of all their legal rights on a Presidential say so. Readers in the US no longer have any security under the law.

Roman citizens enjoyed a right to a trial, a right of appeal, and could not be tortured, whipped, or executed except if found guilty of treason, and anyone charged with treason could demand a trial in Rome. We have regressed more than 2000 years with this appalling ruling.

Parents in England Lose Right Over Sex Education

November 5, 2009

Telegraph - Pupils in England will be given classes in sex and relationships from the age of five under Government plans to cut teenage pregnancies.

Children will learn about body parts, the facts of life and puberty in primary school. At secondary school, they will be taught about pregnancy, contraception, HIV and homosexual relationships, it was disclosed.

All mothers and fathers will be able to keep children out on moral and religious grounds but will lose the right of withdraw when they turn 15. The ruling will affect 600,000 pupils a year...

'Fat Family' Children Taken from Parents in UK

October 22, 2009

Sky News Online - Seven children, including a newborn baby, have been taken from their overweight parents and put into care because of concerns over their welfare. The family from Dundee was split up by social workers following a meeting of the Children's Panel.

The youngsters include a girl born earlier this week at the city's Ninewells Hospital and taken from the arms of her 23 stone mother shortly afterwards. The 40-year-old woman and her 53-year-old husband, who weighs around 18 stone, have not been named to protect the identity of their children.

Two of their kids, aged three and four, were taken into care earlier this year. Now the other five, including the newborn and a 13-year-old boy who is said to weigh 16 stone, have been taken from their parents.

The local authority insisted it was not its policy to remove children from their family home solely on the basis of weight problems. Councils will always act with the welfare and safety of children in mind and there can be many reasons for action being taken.

But the family's solicitor Kathleen Price has previously claimed obesity was the main reason for the children being taken from their parents. She said the couple had not been given a fair hearing and had been "victimised."

A spokesman for Dundee City Council said:

"Any decision about a child's situation is given full and careful consideration.

"In many cases social workers will have been providing a high level of professional and caring support to a family for many years in a bid to keep them together.

"However, the welfare and safety of a child or children is the over-riding priority and in some cases, despite the strenuous efforts of the agencies providing this support, the best option is for them to be looked after away from their home.

"Councils will always act with the welfare and safety of children in mind and there can be many reasons for action being taken."