Thank You, Garrison Keillor!

Congress' shameful retreat from American values



Published October 4, 2006


I would not send my college kid off for a semester abroad if I were you.
Last week, we suspended human rights in America, and what goes around
comes around. Ixnay habeas corpus.

The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor and majesty, decided that an "enemy
combatant" is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy
combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish grandmother
or your Czech au pair, and can be arrested and held for as long as
authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to
examine the matter. If your college kid were to be arrested in Bangkok
or Cairo, suspected of "crimes against the state" and held in prison,
you'd assume that an American foreign service officer would be able to
speak to your kid and arrange for a lawyer, but this may not be true
anymore. Be forewarned.

The Senate also decided it's up to the president to decide whether it's
OK to make these enemies stand naked in cold rooms for a couple of days
in blinding light and be beaten by interrogators. This is now purely a
bureaucratic matter: The plenipotentiary stamps the file "enemy
combatants" and throws the poor schnooks into prison and at his leisure
he tries them by any sort of kangaroo court he wishes to assemble and
they have no right to see the evidence against them, and there is no
appeal. This was passed by 65 senators and will now be signed by
President Bush, put into effect, and in due course be thrown out by the
courts.

It's good that Barry Goldwater is dead because this would have killed
him. Go back to the Senate of 1964--Goldwater, Dirksen, Russell,
McCarthy, Javits, Morse, Fulbright--and you won't find more than 10
votes for it.

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak
in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of
the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Ideal. Mark their
names. Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees
to these people forfeits its honor. Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett,
Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn,
Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole,
Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch,
Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg,
Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez,
Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts,
Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter,
Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich,
Warner.

To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott: Mark their names and mark them well. For
them, no minstrel raptures swell. High though their titles, proud their
name, boundless their wealth as wish can claim, these wretched figures
shall go down to the vile dust from whence they sprung, unwept,
unhonored and unsung.

Three Republican senators made a show of opposing the bill and after
they'd collected all the praise they could get, they quickly folded. Why
be a hero when you can be fairly sure that the court will dispose of
this piece of garbage.

If, however, the court does not, then our country has taken a step
toward totalitarianism. If the government can round up someone and never
be required to explain why, then it's no longer the United States as you
and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their
wildest dreams. They have made us become like them.

I got some insight last week into who supports torture when I went down
to Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church. It was spooky. I
walked in, was met by two burly security men with walkie-talkies, and
within 10 minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes'
church and that it would be better if I didn't talk about politics. I
was there on a book tour for "Homegrown Democrat," but they thought it
better if I didn't mention it. So I tried to make light of it: I told
the audience, "I don't need to talk politics. I have no need even to be
interested in politics--I'm a citizen, I have plenty of money and my
grandsons are at least 12 years away from being eligible for military
service." And the audience applauded! Those were their sentiments
exactly. We've got ours, and who cares?

The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be
snatched off the streets, flown to Guantanamo Bay, stripped naked,
forced to stand for 48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise. So
why should they worry? It's only the Jews who are in danger, and the
homosexuals and gypsies. The Christians are doing fine. If you can't
trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to
say why, then whom can you trust?

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Garrison Keillor is a syndicated columnist and host of "A Prairie Home
Companion."