Letter to Sen. Ron Wyden:
Dear Sen. Wyden:
Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has proposed S. 185, the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007, which repeals portions of the 2006 Military Commissions Act that eliminated the a basic constitutional provision from our country’s legal system.
More than half of the Democratic Senators have signed on to the bill as co-sponsors since it was put forward, as has one of the independents. I would like to know if you intend to co-sponsor or otherwise support the bill, if you feel there is some flaw in its implementation, or if you do not believe habeas corpus applies to persons covered by the Military Commissions Act and that it should not go through.
On an unrelated note, I’d like to express my profound disgust for the vote you and your colleagues made on the Lieberman amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. You’ve green-lighted the way for the administration to use cherry-picked intelligence as a reason for air strikes in Iran. One of the Republican presidential hopefuls — who didn’t even vote on the amendment — said he was ready to preemptively strike Iran within hours of the resolution’s passage, long before any of the reports have been churned out.
It’s baffling to me that any of you think the administration can be trusted on even the smallest issues at this point, given their record. I hope you know what you’re doing, but the past several months haven’t exactly given me the impression that that’s the case.