[Oe List ...] A word from Garrison Keillor

Wed Oct 4 19:49:15 EST 2006

 Mark their names

Garrison Keillor Tribune Media Services

Published: October 2, 2006

I would not send my college kid off for a semester abroad if I were  
you. Last week, we suspended human rights in America, and what goes  
around comes around. Ixnay habeas corpus.

The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor and majesty, has decided that an  
"enemy combatant" is any non-citizen whom the president says is an  
enemy combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish  
grandmother or your Czech au pair, and can be arrested and held for  
as long as authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of  
law to examine the matter.

If your college kid were to be arrested in Bangkok or Cairo,  
suspected of "crimes against the state" and held in prison, you'd  
assume that an American foreign service officer would be able to  
speak to your kid and arrange for a lawyer, but this may not be true  
anymore. Be forewarned.

The Senate also decided it's up to the president to decide whether  
it's okay to make these enemies stand naked in cold rooms for a  
couple days in blinding light and be beaten by interrogators.

This is now purely a bureaucratic matter: The plenipotentiary stamps  
the file "enemy combatants" and throws the poor shnooks into prison  
and at his leisure he tries them by any sort of kangaroo court he  
wishes to assemble and they have no right to see the evidence against  
them, and there is no appeal.

This was passed by 65 senators and will now be signed by Mr. Bush,  
put into effect, and in due course be thrown out by the courts.

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to  
speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high  
moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Idea.

Mark their names: Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond, Brownback,  
Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Coleman,  
Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici,  
Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch,  
Hutchison, Imhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg,  
Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez,  
Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts,  
Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter,  
Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich,  
Warner.

To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott: Mark their names and mark them well.  
For them, no minstrel raptures swell. High though their titles, proud  
their name, boundless their wealth as wish can claim, these wretched  
figures shall go down to the vile dust from whence they sprung,  
unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

Three Republican senators made a show of opposing the bill and after  
they'd collected all the praise they could get, they quickly folded.  
Why be a hero when you can be fairly sure that the Supreme Court will  
dispose of this piece of garbage.

If, however, the Court does not, then our country has taken a step  
toward totalitarianism. If the government can round up someone and  
never be required to explain why, then it's no longer the United  
States of America as you and I always understood it.

Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have  
made us become like them.

I got some insight recently into who supports torture when I went  
down to Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church.

It was spooky. I walked in, was met by two burly security men with  
walkie-talkies, and within 10 minutes was told by three people that  
this was the Bushes' church and that it would be better if I didn't  
talk about politics.

I was there on a book tour for "Homegrown Democrat" but they thought  
it better if I didn't mention it. So I tried to make light of it: I  
told the audience, "I don't need to talk politics. I have no need  
even to be interested in politics - I'm a citizen, I have plenty of  
money and my grandsons are at least 12 years away from being eligible  
for military service." And the audience applauded! Those were their  
sentiments exactly. We've got ours, and who cares?

The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be  
snatched off the streets, flown to Guantánamo, stripped naked, forced  
to stand for 48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise, so why  
should they worry? It's only the Jews who are in danger, and the  
homosexuals and gypsies. The Christians are doing just fine.

If you can't trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people  
and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?

Garrison Keillor is the host of the American public-radio show "A  
Prairie Home Companion." This article was distributed by Tribune  
Media Services International.