This Congress and this president

Seems the atrocities keep piling up. No one seemed to notice at first when president Bush signed the anti-terrorism act the other day, that it had ramifications. Keith Olbermann, did, though, and said it in his extra-long special comment last night: The Death of Habeas Corpus, transcript and links to video.

Your words are lies, Sir.
They are lies, that imperil us all.
"One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks," …you told us yesterday… "said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America."That terrorist, sir, could only hope.
Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.
Habeas Corpus? Gone.
The Geneva Conventions? Optional.
The Moral Force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.
These things you have done, Mr. Bush… they would be "the beginning of the end of America."

Sheila Lennon has lots more links on this story. Jurist has news, background, commentary on military tribunals and habeas corpus, including a column from University of Virgina history professor Paul Halliday on a time when habeas corpus was suspended:

Americans, like the English, have always needed habeas corpus most when our fears were greatest. When we use habeas corpus, we protect the safety of both our physical selves and our moral selves.
...Well might the President reflect on this history before his signature makes the Great Writ quite a bit smaller.

(Added later:) Also, Human Rights Watch has an analysis of the provisions of the Military Commissions Act.

And, in Rolling Stone, a tribute to the group that passed this bill: The Worst Congress Ever. The ten worst are profiled separately. It doesn't seem ten's enough.

These past six years were more than just the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch...a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater.