Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

What is the status of Civil Rights today?

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On this day of remembrance of MLK and the Civil Rights Movement with the many self-congratulatory media replays of key moments of the 60’s and of how they contributed to a better and more just American society, it is indeed ironic to still see instances where civil rights are completely disregarded by our government.

One of the most striking of these is the continued detention in Kuwait of a US citizen. Gulet Mohamed. His story was first brought to light in early January by the New York Times. Glenn Greenwald has been following this as well on Jan 6 and again today.

This 19-year-old Somali-American who, over the last year, had been in Somalia with relatives and traveling in the Middle East was picked up in Kuwait and questioned both by US and Kuwaiti authorities about his travels. This young man says he was tortured and threatened with retaliation against his family. The State Department has not been forthcoming about its own involvement in Mohamed’s detention even though they have insisted that they provided him with consular assistance. This is pretty laughable when you consider that the Kuwaitis no longer have an interest in keeping him and, in fact, released him to his brother who presented them with a one-way ticket back to the US. Unfortunately, at the airport in Kuwait City, it was determined that Mohamed was on a US-generated no-fly list which meant that he is now back in custody in a Kuwaiti jail.

Frankly, this behavior by our government is no longer surprising to me. However, what really anguishes me, in the midst of all of the attention of late directed at the Constitution, particularly the 1st and 2nd Amendments and its recent recitation on the floor of the House, is that there is so very little media attention paid to such an egregious violation of Constitutional law.

Does the Constitution mean anything at all to us as a legal document? Or is it merely a club that is used to whack one’s political enemies?

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  2. in The Nation about two books on habeas corpus called The Gutted Write. You might find it of interest, if you haven’t read it:

    “Beginning with royal power” and ending with “detention of people on a scale that defies judiciousness,” [Paul D. Halliday’s] book suggests that the “idea of habeas corpus”-that no person shall be detained except by due process of law-“has been more powerful outside of courtrooms than inside them.” Yet his book is not without hope. Halliday shows how innovative and persistent judges turned an instrument of the king’s prerogative into a “writ of majestic, even equitable, sweep” and managed, in some cases at least, to defend it against “a legislative onslaught on liberties of every kind.” In thwarting the Bush administration’s absolutist leanings, the Supreme Court has recently shown glimmerings of that same independence, but the results remain unclear. In the twenty-first century, habeas corpus can be as vital for the protection of individual liberties as it was in the seventeenth, but courageous judges-precisely the sort excoriated by Scalia-will have to make it so.

    • It does seem that the only hope is through the judiciary. Elected officials don’t have the stomach to stand up for a long-established right that is poorly understood by many Americans.
      For all the whoopla about the Constitution, hardly anyone talks about mandatory civics classes in our schools. It’s one more of those confounding ironies like overwrought patriotism alongside distrust of government and anemic amounts of community service.

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