Friday, September 29, 2006

Military Commissions Act of 2006--S.3930

Otherwise known as the Detainee Bill.

I apologize that it has taken me so long to get this up, but when you check out the links I post here, you will understand that it has taken me this long to go through Bill S.3930 aka Detainee Bill.

I am going to offer you 2 ways to access this. I will link to the Library of Congress site itself where the bill is and I am going to link to the PDF file that is offered on the site of the Bill. It is 94 pages.

If you choose to use the Library of Congress site, know that after a few minutes, it deletes your specific search and you have to go back to the first page to get to where you were. The Library of Congress page is laid out in a more comprehensive way to go through one item to another.

There is a substantial amount of information to go over, so I am going to save my comments for tomorrow on certain line items.

I will say that after going through the whole bill, there has been much more fuss surrounding this, than what was needed. I am sure many would disagree, some with cause and some because they feel they have to disagree by virtue of being against the bill, even before they have seen it.

It is what it is.

The Senate approved the detainee legislation after Bush's allies narrowly fended off five amendments. The vote on final passage drew support from 53 Republicans and 12 Democrats, while 32 Democrats, one independent and one Republican vote nay. Full Roll Call here.

[UPDATE]There was also another Bill passed, although with all the fuss about the "Detainee Bill", not much has been mentioned on this. The
Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act aka The Warantless Wiretapping Law, story on this here.
Roll Call
PDF of Bill
H R 5825

On a side note, the Opinion Journal has an excellent article titled Infidel Documents. It is a good read.
Freedom's Zone also has a very simple yet elequent opinion.