A little worisome...

It appears that Keith Olbermann is a little unhappy about a smallish provision in the recent Military Commissions Act.

Oh, sure, the Revolutionary Communist Party thinks that Congress may have gone a little too far in passing the Military Commission Act (yet to be signed into law by the President, weirdly) that has some little blip in it about suspending the writ of habeas corpus. They're friggin' communists:

The MCA redefines “unlawful enemy combatant” so that it can be applied to U.S. citizens and to people who have never engaged in combat against the U.S.

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Under the MCA, legal immigrants in the U.S. labeled ‘‘alien unlawful enemy combatants” can be imprisoned, tortured, denied all legal rights, and sentenced by a military commission. U.S. citizens labelled ‘‘unlawful enemy combatants’’ can be imprisoned and tortured—but the MCA does not make citizens subject to military commissions. The creation of different legal standards for citizens and non-citizens living in the U.S. reverses the long-standing principle that everyone living in the U.S. is governed by the same courts, laws and rights.

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The MCA rewrites current federal habeas corpus law to forbid federal courts from considering a writ of habeas corpus (a petition for release from unlawful detention) by an “alien” detained as an “enemy combatant.”
The MCA redefines “unlawful enemy combatant” so that it can be applied to U.S. citizens and to people who have never engaged in combat against the U.S.

And some Yale law professor says that

The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

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We are not dealing with hypothetical abuses. The president has already subjected a citizen to military confinement. Consider the case of Jose Padilla. A few months after 9/11, he was seized by the Bush administration as an "enemy combatant" upon his arrival at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. He was wearing civilian clothes and had no weapons. Despite his American citizenship, he was held for more than three years in a military brig, without any chance to challenge his detention before a military or civilian tribunal. After a federal appellate court upheld the president's extraordinary action, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, handing the administration's lawyers a terrible precedent.

The new bill, if passed, would further entrench presidential power. At the very least, it would encourage the Supreme Court to draw an invidious distinction between citizens and legal residents. There are tens of millions of legal immigrants living among us, and the bill encourages the justices to uphold mass detentions without the semblance of judicial review.

But he's an East Coast liberal, of course.

Oh, and Senator Russ Feingold is opposed to the Military Commissions Act:

One of the most disturbing provisions of this bill eliminates the right of habeas corpus for those detained as enemy combatants. I support an amendment by Senator Specter to strike that provision from the bill. I ask unanimous consent that my separate statement on that amendment be put in the record at the appropriate point.

Habeas corpus is a fundamental recognition that in America, the government does not have the power to detain people indefinitely and arbitrarily. And that in America, the courts must have the power to review the legality of executive detention decisions.

Habeas corpus is a longstanding vital part of our American tradition, and is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

As a group of retired judges wrote to Congress, habeas corpus “safeguards the most hallowed judicial role in our constitutional democracy – ensuring that no man is imprisoned unlawfully.”

Mr. President, this bill would fundamentally alter that historical equation. Faced with an executive branch that has detained hundreds of people without trial for years now, it would eliminate the right of habeas corpus.

Under this legislation, some individuals, at the designation of the executive branch alone, could be picked up, even in the United States, and held indefinitely without trial and without any access whatsoever to the courts. They would not be able to call upon the laws of our great nation to challenge their detention because they would have been put outside the reach of the law.