Information about the vote from special interest groups and other information providers in our Report Cards:
Friends Committee on National Legislation
Military Commissions Act of 2006.
The bill authorizes and outlines the military commissions system to be used to try “enemy combatants” caught in the War on Terror.American Civil Liberties Union
Military Commissions Act.
The House of Representatives voted to approve the Military Commissions Act of 2006. This group opposed the bill because it gutted the enforceability of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, retroactively stripped federal courts of authority to consider habeas corpus petitions and other legal actions by foreign detainees, provided retroactive immunity to civilians who authorized or ordered illegal acts of torture and abuse, and set up military commissions that can order executions of defendants based on evidence that the defendant cannot see and that was obtained only as the result of horrific abuse.United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers
Military Tribunals (H.R.6166).
President Bush has repeatedly used the 9/11 tragedy and the Iraq war as excuses to erode the Bill of Rights and escape from past U.S. commitments to international human rights, as well as legal standards of due process. The House of Representatives passed legislation (HR6166) to permit the U.S. military to use various forms of torture, to allow the government to withhold evidence at military trials of alleged terror suspects, to hold prisoners forever without trial, and to exempt from prosecution any war crimes committed before December 30, 2005.The John Birch Society
Military Tribunals.
This bill (H.R.6166) would authorize a new system of military tribunals to try persons designated “unlawful enemy combatants” by the president. The bill defines an unlawful enemy combatant to include a person who “has purposely and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents.” Once designated an unlawful enemy combatant, a defendant’s rights would be curtailed: he would be denied the right of habeas corpus; he could be detained indefinitely; and evidence obtained through coercion could be used against him — so long as the coercion falls outside the administration’s definition of torture.
Critics of the tribunals bill are planning to file suit in order to test the constitutionality of the legislation. This legislation was in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 29 ruling on the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which declared that the administration’s current system for trying military detainees was unconstitutional. In our opinion the bill would curtail defendant rights. The Senate passed this legislation the following day (see Senate Roll Call #259).