I was thinking today of Oldman. For those who don't know, Oldman was an ex-Conservative who used to blog with myself, Stirling and Shaula at BOP News before he died, in his thirties, of the flu. He was one of the smartest guys I've ever met. Also one of the kindest. There's an old saw that runs "liberals love humanity, but hate people". Oldman was the opposite - he had boundless contempt for the mass of humanity, but endless patience and kindness for individuals.

One of his hot button issues was the Constitution. Oldman would put up with all sorts of crap, but he used to say he'd sworn to protect the Constitution and he was bloody well going to do so. I remember how when the first news of warrantless wiretapping leaked out just before he he died, he was livid, commenting that "the fourth amendmnent has apparently been repealed."

More after the jump.

I can only imagine his reaction to the current bill passing Congress. It's not the torture part that would outrage him, it's the fact that the bill lets the President designate citizens as enemy combatants. Once so designated they lose their constitutional protections and will face a military tribunal. As the LA Times points out, this isn't hypothetical, it was already done to Jose Padilla - who is held at the President's whim, now without any chance for a trail to clear his name, or at worst get a sentence and start serving it. He can't face his accusers, see the evidence against him, have a speedy trial (or any trial) - none of it. And the Supreme Court was ok with that.

This bill makes that formal. If you're considered an enemy combatant you're screwed. And if you're not American you won't even have a chance for a federal court to rule on whether you're a foreign combatant - you can be held in a gulag forever, with no judicial review.

This turns the US into a bannana republic. It makes it into a country of men, not laws and turns the President into damn near a dictator. He can already go to war without any oversight (by the time 60 days are over, you're at war) and now he can arrest people and hold them forever and torture them in the meantime.

Let's be frank - this is worse than the Patriot Act, by a couple orders of magnitude. The Patriot Act violated only a couple of the amendments, this takes out the entire bill of rights.

Whatever the cowardly political calculus going on here, it can't be emphasized enought that this is an historic bill that will be looked back on with disgust. Either it will eventually be repealed, in the way the Alien and Sedition Acts were repealed, in which case it will be a dark blot on America's history, or it will not be repealed, in which case it will be looked back on as the formal declaration that the American experiment in divided government and human rights was over. It is not an exageration in the least to say that if this bill passes and stays in force, that the America we knew, and that many of us loved, is dead. An America without Habeas Corpus, where the President can lock up people and have them tried in Kangaroo courts is not the America the Founders fought for and I will not defame their memory by pretending it is.

America, the shining city on the hill will be dead and a new one is born. You'll excuse me if I don't wish the new America good health or long life. May it die soon, with every man's hand raised against it, and no one to mourn iits passing..

And as for those who midwifed it, may their names be cursed for all eternity, their gravestones spat upon and their cowardice remembered as the poison it is. They have betrayed their country as thoroughly as a Benedict Arnold, striking at the heart of what makes America America.

I will mourn the old America. Perhaps it was not perfect, perhaps it was often full of injustice. But the dream of justice, the striving for freedom, was there. The ideals and the attempt to reach them commanded respect.

The new America seeks safety at the price of freedom, and as Ben Franklin noted it will receive neither. Nor will it deserve either.

And since Oldman isn't here to say any of this, I'll say it for him, even I can't say it in his style.

Rest in peace, my friend. I wish to hell you were here to help fight this, but at least you are spared having to watch it.

But I do know this - Oldman wouldn't give up if he were still here. He'd dig in for the long fight, to make this like the Alien and Sedition acts, and not the death toll of the Republic. And for my American friends that's all I can advise. America has often done the wrong thing, then done the right thing later. This can be one of those times. If this bill does past, for those who love freedom, and are loyal to the Constitution, not the King, let this be the beginning of a new fight for America's soul - not the end of America.