Squashed: I'm pretty unhappy with my Senator, Carl Levin
My senator, Senator Levin (D-MI, Phone: 202-224-6221) sponsored National Defense Authorization Act which, among other things, permits the indefinite detention of anybody suspected by the administration of connections to terrorism without trial.
As it turns out, whomever is answering the phone is…
No one cares that you called and you can’t vote for anyone that opposed the bill that isn’t also a psychotic libertarian. More importantly, indefinite detention without trial has always been possible because there is no accountability structure for members of the armed forces overseas. We operate secret prisons around the globe and will indefinitely, regardless of the petty language in a funding bill or some fantastical construct of rule of law.
Read more Camus.
It’s one thing to hold people overseas. If we’re going to have wars, we need to detain people. Theoretically, you’d release them after the war is over. Or maybe turn them over to local government. War is ugly. I realize that.
That said, there’s no reason we need to do it at home. And there’s no reason we need to create a space that is effectively “at home” but is technically “in the sovereign nation of Cuba” to paint the pretense that a lack of legal process is somehow a military necessity.
And does Senator Levin care that I told a handful of people to call him and be angry? Probably not—he’s not particularly vulnerable. But a few dozen calls from constituents could well shift this from “issue we’ll reluctantly support and hope we can slip through quietly” to “issue people are paying attention to. And, curiously, that causes people to behave differently. (Remember that notary act that got pocket vetoed?)
I’m also pretty confident that Levin’s staff monitor social media. How much does he care that I’m unhappy with him? He’s not going to lose sleep over it. But … let’s put it this way. The woman I talked to on the phone sounded pretty exasperated. I wasn’t the first person to make an angry call.
(via thecallus)
