January 6, 2011
Here is an interesting piece of news from the Washington Post: "A group of prominent U.S. Republicans" went to Paris last month to attend a rally of the French Committee for a Democratic Iran. This organization just happens to be intimately connected with the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK).
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Who named us the Lord High Executioner for the entire world? It is the ultimate tragedy, what the Greeks would call nemesis, that a nation that once prided itself as a shining city on the hill or as "indispensable" can now be summed up with another word. That word is "rogue."
The Republicans are hypocrites. Duh. But you are a being a much worse hypocrite when you accept that "terrorist organization" list as truthful instead of what it is: an arbitrary slander against an amalgam of very different groups, declared "terrorist" (the word "terrorism" intentionally left undefined) and thus criminalized without any form of due process in blatant violation of the US Constitution's explicit prohibition against Bills of Attainder.
Constitutional bans
The United States Constitution forbids bills of attainder under Article I, Section 9. It was considered an excess or abuse of the British monarchy and Parliament. No bills of attainder have been passed since 1798 in the UK. Attainder as such was also a legal consequence of convictions in courts of law, but this ceased to be a part of punishment in 1870.[9] The provision forbidding state law bills of attainder, Article I, Section 10, reflects the importance that the framers attached to this issue, since the unamended constitution imposes very few restrictions on state governments' power.
Within the U.S. Constitution, the clauses forbidding attainder laws serve two purposes. First, they reinforced the separation of powers, by forbidding the legislature to perform judicial functions—since the outcome of any such acts of legislature would of necessity take the form of a bill of attainder. Second, they embody the concept of due process, which was later reinforced by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. The text of the Constitution, Article I, Section 9; Clause 3 is "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed". The constitution of every State also expressly forbids bills of attainder. For example, Wisconsin's constitution Article I, Section 12 reads:
No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, nor any law impairing the obligation of contracts, shall ever be passed, and no conviction shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture of estate.
Contrast this with the subtly more modern variation of the Texas version: Article 1 (Titled Bill of Rights) Section 16, entitled Bills of Attainder; Ex Post Facto or Retroactive Laws: Impairing Obligation of Contracts: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, retroactive law, or any law impairing the obligation of contracts, shall be made".
the community organizing group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) sued the U.S. government after the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution in early 2009 barring the group from receiving federal funding.[30] Another, broader bill, the Defund ACORN Act, was enacted by Congress later that year. In March 2010, a federal district court declared the funding ban an unconstitutional bill of attainder.[31] On August 13, 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed and remanded on the grounds that only 10 percent of ACORN's funding was federal and that did not constitute "punishment."[32]
How the US let al-Qaida get its hands on an Iraqi weapons factory In an exclusive extract from his new book, A History of the World since 9/11, Dominic Streatfeild explains how despite expert warnings, the US let al-Qaida buy an arsenal of deadly weapons – then tried to cover it up
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