Human Rights

While listening to Rush Limbaugh ranting on today about how the US Constitution didn't apply to the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, et al, and that the Dems are trying to help the very people who are trying to destroy our Constitution and kill us all, I had a prickling inclination to call him, but I've heard the way he sets up the ol' straw man--he's good at that. When a caller points out an errancy in his "logic", Rushie goes into a monologue, setting up an ironclad rebuttal for a position the caller never held in the first place.

Anywho, it occurred to me that:

1. The Constitution is a list of natural, God-given, individual human rights that are common to everyone.
2. The US Government is charged with protecting those rights (Please note that the gov't is not the grantor of the rights, but the trustee...) and
3. Just because someone isn't born or living in the good old US of A doesn't mean that natural, God-given, individual human rights shouldn't apply to them.

("Don't you know there's a war on," you scream at the monitor, "those are terrorists down there, you dunderhead!")

Yes, I know all about the war. I don't care. Rights are rights. The reason those folks are being held is because there isn't enough evidence to try them in a military tribunal, or whatever they use for whatever they're considered to be. If there's not enough evidence to even hold a trial, much less convict them, then send 'em back to the wasteland they came from.

As for the belief everyone seems to have that the rules are different if there's a war, well, the Constitution wasn't written for the times when everything was cake and daisies--it was written for times like these, when your gov't is using some trumped-up crisis to overstep it's bounds.

Your assignment for today: Go read the Constitution. The whole thing, especially the original Bill of Rights. Catch the Declaration of Independance while you're at it, too.