The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in South Carolina ruled on Tuesday, July 15, that Ali al-Marri, a Qatari citizen currently imprisoned in a SC military brig, could be held indefinitely as an “enemy combatant.” In doing so, the Court sanctioned President Bush’s ludicrous assertion of power to unilaterally label individuals as “enemy combatants” and to detain them indefinitely on that basis.

In a separate but related ruling issued the same day, the Court also found that “enemy combatants” are entitled to some level of due process, a level that the Court contended al-Marri had not received. Consequently, al-Marri’s case will be sent to a South Carolina federal judge, who will determine whether the President classified him correctly as an “enemy combatant.”

It is disturbing to think that al-Marri, who was studying at Illinois’s Bradley University when he was arrested and later deemed an “enemy combatant” by President Bush, could have been held for the last five years without any criminal charges. It is more disturbing, however, that the Fourth Circuit Court approved of his detainment and supported the President’s assertion of authority to detain U.S. residents indefinitely without charge or a criminal trial.

The Court’s decision in this case is beyond unacceptable. We should all be outraged, for this injustice betrays our fundamental values as a nation and sullies our reputation abroad.

Further, if Ali al-Marri, a foreign national living legally in the U.S. on a student visa, could be arrested and detained indefinitely simply on the President’s arbitrary assertion that al-Marri is an “enemy combatant” in the amorphous “War on Terror,” then we are all at risk.

The Senate passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 yesterday by a vote of 69 to 28, rejecting each of the three recent amendments in the process—amendments that would have mitigated the harmful effects of the bill. In passing this legislation, Republicans claimed a victory, touting the bill as a pragmatic compromise between protecting our civil liberties and defending our nation from terrorists. Senate Democrats, on the other hand (those who voted for the legislation), described the bill as “improved, but imperfect,” in the words of Senator Barack Obama.

Those who opposed the bill, however, rightly labeled it a travesty.

Despite claims otherwise, the bill passed yesterday is not an improvement, nor is it a compromise. It violates Americans’ constitutional right to due process, sanctions the Bush administration’s outrageous assertions of executive power, and sets a precedent whereby Congress is rendered irrelevant as a co-equal branch of government with a constitutional responsibility to exercise oversight.

More disturbing than the actual legislation, however, is the severe political dysfunction that the bill’s passage reveals. Democratic majorities were elected in 2006 in both the House and Senate with a clear mandate to reject the Bush administration’s violations of the Constitution and concentration of power in the executive branch. Yet Democrats failed yesterday on this mandate. Political expedience, sadly, trumped the will of the American people.

This failure illustrates an important lesson: To protect our rights, we must change the political calculus that leads many of our elected officials in Congress vote to serve the authority of an imperial presidency rather than voting to obey the Constitution, which they swear oaths to uphold. Calling and emailing our Congresspeople alone has failed in this regard. By forming community coalitions, we can amplify our common demands, build our civic power, and more effectively pressure our elected officials.

The Senate is expected to vote this Wednesday, July 9, on whether to approve the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. If passed, this legislation will provide immunity to the telecommunications companies that participated in the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program (at the behest of the Bush administration) and sanction expanded spying on the American people.

If our Senators approve this atrocious piece of legislation, they will do a tremendous disservice to our nation by sweeping under the rug the Bush administration’s unprecedented assertions of executive power and egregious violations of our constitutional rights. Equally disturbing, Senate approval of the bill will effectively cover up Congress’s failure to provide meaningful oversight over the NSA’s surveillance program, oversight that forms a crucial component of our system of checks and balances.

According to whistleblowers Mark Klein and Babak Pasdar, in an editorial published today, “the American people do not know the full extent of the telecom actions in warrantless wiretapping and if amnesty passes, we may never know. Allowing this administration and these corporations to get away with this illegal and unconstitutional behavior sets the worst type of precedent for future American generations.”

The tremendous potential implications of this decision are clear. Thus, we call on our elected officials in the Senate to pursue justice by reasserting their responsibility for oversight, rather than following blindly the path of political expediency.

There is little time left, but your voice could make a tremendous difference in the vote on Wednesday. Look up your Senators’ phone numbers at www.senate.gov and urge them to protect our Fourth Amendment rights by voting against this unconstitutional bill. For more information about the misconceptions that surround the immunity provision, check out this recent article by Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York dismissed a lawsuit filed by Canadian extraordinary rendition and torture victim Maher Arar. The Court’s decision in this case (PDF) is a travesty that reveals the willingness of our government (a willingness that permeates all three branches in different degrees) to shield itself by invoking hollow concerns of national security. Far more importantly, however, the decision betrays the values on which this nation was founded.

In dismissing his lawsuit, the Court ruled that the U.S. government had not violated Arar’s right to due process by sending him to Syria because, as a citizen of Canada not formally admitted into the United States, Arar simply did not have constitutional rights. This reprehensible finding contradicts the recent decision of the Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush, which stated that habeas corpus rights apply to foreign nationals, and disregards the intent of the framers of our Constitution.

Our nation was founded around the simple idea that the basic liberties that we hold sacred and dear are inalienable rights to which all people are entitled. Thus, in drafting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the founders of this country meant to protect our basic liberties and to state essential rights that they believed to be universal. The Court’s narrow interpretation–-that only U.S. citizens enjoy constitutional rights–violated this simple belief.

Maher Arar deserves redress for the crimes committed against him. We should not allow the blanket defense of concern for national security to stifle criticism of government and limit our basic rights. We need to pressure Congress to protect our liberties and to put an end to these crimes of extraordinary rendition and torture, among a myriad of others.

Thirty years ago, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) in reaction to President Richard Nixon’s legendary spying on activists and political opponents.

Now, 30 years later, a different Congress seems to wonder, Why all the fuss? Instead of strengthening laws to protect their constituents from further executive branch lawbreaking, they are offering retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies that broke the law when they gave our phone, e-mail and Internet records to the NSA without warrants. Immunity would just sweep the unpleasant spectacle under the rug and bring to a halt all the lawsuits that might help us find out what laws were broken, by whom, and which of us were affected.

On June 20, the House passed the very flawed FISA Amendments Act by a vote of 293-129. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill as early as July 8. While senators are celebrating Independence Day in their home states, they need to hear from the people back home that:

1. Retroactive immunity for telecoms is unacceptable. The courts need to do their job and decide whether laws were broken, by whom, and against whom. The bill’s alternative version of “judicial oversight” would simply give the courts some busy-work: The job of finding out whether the companies received assurances from the President that he’d authorized the program. There’s no question that he did, but that doesn’t dismiss their lawbreaking or justify blanket immunity for the lawbreakers.
2. Even if Congress strikes telecom immunity from the bill, the bill would still be unacceptable because it would allow wiretapping without individual warrants, in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

This Independence Day, if you happen to see your members of Congress, ask them to reread the U.S. Constitution. It says that Congress writes the laws that all people, including the administration, must live by. When the administration breaks those laws, Congress must hold the administration accountable for its actions.

If the FISA Amendments Act becomes law without a major overhaul, Congress will have done exactly the opposite. It will have responded to executive branch lawbreaking by rewriting laws to legalize its illegal activity. It is a slippery slope indeed.