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Does Darrell Issa represent your Christian values?

Except for our troops who fought in World War II, Americans have not seen such dark days as now face America. This ominous darkness against liberty has gathered slowly since those terrible lightning bolts on September 11, 2001.

Historically, with every major war, our nation’s laws have tended to abrogate certain freedoms, which were eventually restored as peace returned. The freedoms destroyed by the Bush administration exceed anything in the past, however, and many may be lost forever. We now live under “a government more dangerous to our liberty than is the enemy it claims to protect us from,” said Keith Olberman last month.

All these new laws were worded specifically to protect the government officials who perpetrated crimes and not just to protect the American people from enemies abroad.

None is more dangerous and destructive than the Torture Enabling Act, signed into law by George W. Bush on September 27. By re-defining an “illegal enemy combatant,” the government can now subject American citizens and legal residents of the US to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president now has the power to apply this label to anyone he wants.

As stated by Professor Bruce Ackerman, Yale Law professor, this act “not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops ‘during an armed conflict,’ it also allows him to seize anybody who has ‘purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.’ This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison.”

This act, so destructive to the liberties of all Americans, was signed into law last month. Did you know that your local congressman, Darrell Issa, voted for this dreadful act on September 26, yet the majority of the people in Fallbrook voted to keep this man as their representative in Congress? Does this man, who voted to destroy our liberties, represent your Christian values?

Joe Howard Crews

 

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