Habeas Corpus is Like Car Insurance

Habeas Corpus is like car insurance—you don’t worry about it much until you have an accident; or, in the case of habeas corpus, until you get arrested for peaceful protest and hauled before a military tribunal.  Sound preposterous?  Isn’t this the United States, the land of the free?  Well, no, actually.  Not anymore.  Not since the Patriot Act, the NDAA 2012 Act, and the Trespass Bills (HR 347, S 1794), AKA the “anti-Occupy bills”.

Now, in the United States of America, U. S. citizens can be indefinitely detained, without charge or trial, for a “belligerent act”.  What is that?  Well, no one quite knows for sure.  Want to stage a protest at the Democratic convention, or question your representative on where your tax dollars are going?  Be careful, you could be guilty of “knowing” you are entering a government building or within proximate space of someone guarded by the Secret Service (if they aren’t in their hotel rooms with prostitutes), and therefore in violation of a federal crime that could land you in prison for ten years, in which case I guess at least you wouldn’t be paying taxes!

Add to this the attacks on our privacy and free speech by the SOPA, PIPA, and now CISPA legislation, which if passed, would eviscerate our ability to voice our outrage and connect with one another on the Internet, and a frightening picture of a world dominated by Big Brother watching and controlling our every move begins to take shape.

These laws make a mockery of our Bill of Rights by violating our First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights, and whether you are a Tea Partier or an Occupier, your civil liberties are under assault.  We the people need to demand that these unconstitutional laws be rescinded before we find ourselves in Nazi Germany, or worse, living out an Orwellian nightmare.

The People Need to Reclaim the Republic

It is telling that despite campaign promises to the contrary, the Obama administration hasn’t held the previous administration accountable for their abuses of power, has not rescinded the Orwellian practices of detention without trial, has sent even more troops to the Middle East, renewed the “Patriot Act”, went along with a bailout bill for greedy, irresponsible bankers over the strenuous objections of the voters and members of Congress, and kept all the Wall Street profiteers in key advisory positions. It appears that the same power brokers are pulling the strings, regardless of who is the governmental figurehead.

I would suggest that both the right and left wing are correct in their assessment that big government and big business are the problem as they are in league with each other and may even, as some fear, become an indistinguishable monolithic power. The ultra-rich 2% can afford to hire lobbyists but can we?  With the rapid disappearance of the middle class and our civil rights, we are becoming an impoverished slave class.

The alarming levels of corruption of government by corporate influence and the banking industry must be addressed if we are to reclaim our democracy.  We can start by rescinding the recent disastrous Supreme Court Citizens United decision that allows corporations to buy elections, pass the Fair Elections Now Act that imposes campaign spending limits, and pass legislation to end the revolving door between government regulatory agencies and corporate lobbying, among many other reforms, in order to reclaim government by and for the people.