Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)

[Nbadan]

Molly Ivins: Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)
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Posted on Sep 27, 2006
By Molly Ivins

With a smug stroke of his pen, President Bush is set to wipe out a safeguard against illegal imprisonment that has endured as a cornerstone of legal justice since the Magna Carta.

AUSTIN, Texas—Oh dear. I’m sure he didn’t mean it. In Illinois’ Sixth Congressional District, long represented by Henry Hyde, Republican candidate Peter Roskam accused his Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth, of planning to “cut and run” on Iraq.

Duckworth is a former Army major and chopper pilot who lost both legs in Iraq after her helicopter got hit by an RPG. “I just could not believe he would say that to me,” said Duckworth, who walks on artificial legs and uses a cane. Every election cycle produces some wincers, but how do you apologize for that one?

The legislative equivalent of that remark is the detainee bill now being passed by Congress. Beloveds, this is so much worse than even that pathetic deal reached last Thursday between the White House and Republican Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The White House has since reinserted a number of “technical fixes” that were the point of the putative “compromise.” It leaves the president with the power to decide who is an enemy combatant.

This bill is not a national security issue—this is about torturing helpless human beings without any proof they are our enemies. Perhaps this could be considered if we knew the administration would use the power with enormous care and thoughtfulness. But of the over 700 prisoners sent to Gitmo, only 10 have ever been formally charged with anything. Among other things, this bill is a CYA for torture of the innocent that has already taken place.

Death by torture by Americans was first reported in 2003 in a New York Times article by Carlotta Gall. The military had announced the prisoner died of a heart attack, but when Gall saw the death certificate, written in English and issued by the military, it said the cause of death was homicide. The “heart attack” came after he had been beaten so often on this legs that they had “basically been pulpified,” according to the coroner.

The story of why and how it took the Times so long to print this information is in the current edition of the Columbia Journalism Review. The press in general has been late and slow in reporting torture, so very few Americans have any idea how far it has spread. As is often true in hierarchical, top-down ins utions, the orders get passed on in what I call the downward communications exaggeration spiral.

For example, on a newspaper, a top editor may remark casually, “Let’s give the new mayor a chance to see what he can do before we start attacking him.”

This gets passed on as “Don’t touch the mayor unless he really screws up.”

And it ultimately arrives at the reporter level as “We can’t say anything negative about the mayor.”

The version of the detainee bill now in the Senate not only undoes much of the McCain-Warner-Graham work, but it is actually much worse than the administration’s first proposal. In one change, the original compromise language said a suspect had the right to “examine and respond to” all evidence used against him. The three senators said the clause was necessary to avoid secret trials. The bill has now dropped the word “examine” and left only “respond to.”

In another change, a clause said that evidence obtained outside the United States could be admitted in court even if it had been gathered without a search warrant. But the bill now drops the words “outside the United States,” which means prosecutors can ignore American legal standards on warrants.

The bill also expands the definition of an unlawful enemy combatant to cover anyone who has “has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” Quick, define “purposefully and materially.” One person has already been charged with aiding terrorists because he sold a satellite TV package that includes the Hezbollah network.

The bill simply removes a suspect’s right to challenge his detention in court. This is a rule of law that goes back to the Magna Carta in 1215. That pretty much leaves the barn door open.

As Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet dissident, wrote, an intelligence service free to torture soon “degenerates into a playground for sadists.” But not unbridled sadism—you will be relieved that the compromise took out the words permitting interrogation involving “severe pain” and subs uted “serious pain,” which is defined as “bodily injury that involves extreme physical pain.”

In July 2003, George Bush said in a speech: “The United States is committed to worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes, whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit.”

Fellow citizens, this bill throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems it necessary—these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law.

I’d like those supporting this evil bill to spare me one affliction: Do not, please, pretend to be shocked by the consequences of this legislation. And do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis.

To find out more about Molly Ivins and see works by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

[RandomGuy]

This proposed bill is the kind of stuff the helps the terrorists.

[boutons_]

It's the American Way!

America, that shining light on the hill, the model for all civilizations on earth.

It will take decades for successors to erase the stains the Repugs are smearing on America.

[smeagol]

Where was the Magna Carta signed? By whom?

Man, I remember my 6th grade History.

[boutons_]

check the internets

[Guru of Nothing]

He stumbled out of the gate with his opening sentence, but after that, he had my attention.

Meet your next president, assuming the Democratic party does not it up.

Mr. President, I am proud to be sponsoring this amendment with the senior senator from West Virginia. He's absolutely right that Congress has abrogated its oversight responsibilities, and one way to reverse that troubling trend is to adopt a sunset provision in this bill. We did that in the Patriot Act, and that allowed us to make important revisions to the bill that reflected our experience about what worked and didn't work during the previous 5 years. We should do that again with this important piece of legislation.

But I want to take a few minutes to speak more broadly about the bill before us.

I may have only been in this body for a short while, but I am not naive to the political considerations that go along with many of the decisions we make here. I realize that soon, we will adjourn for the fall, and the campaigning will begin in earnest. And there will be 30-second attack ads and negative mail pieces, and we will be criticized as caring more about the rights of terrorists than the protection of Americans. And I know that the vote before us was specifically designed and timed to add more fuel to that fire.

And yet, while I know all of this, I'm still disappointed. Because what we're doing here today - a debate over the fundamental human rights of the accused - should be bigger than politics. This is serious.

If this was a debate with obvious ideological differences - heartfelt convictions that couldn't be settled by compromise - I would understand. But it's not.

All of us - Democrats and Republicans - want to do whatever it takes to track down terrorists and bring them to justice as swiftly as possible. All of us want to give our President every tool necessary to do this. And all of us were willing to do that in this bill. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to the American people.

In the five years that the President's system of military tribunals has existed, not one terrorist has been tried. Not one has been convicted. And in the end, the Supreme Court of the United found the whole thing uncons utional, which is why we're here today.

We could have fixed all of this in a way that allows us to detain and interrogate and try suspected terrorists while still protecting the accidentally accused from spending their lives locked away in Guantanamo Bay. Easily. This was not an either-or question.

Instead of allowing this President - or any President - to decide what does and does not cons ute torture, we could have left the definition up to our own laws and to the Geneva Conventions, as we would have if we passed the bill that the Armed Services committee originally offered.

Instead of detainees arriving at Guantanamo and facing a Combatant Status Review Tribunal that allows them no real chance to prove their innocence with evidence or a lawyer, we could have developed a real military system of justice that would sort out the suspected terrorists from the accidentally accused.

And instead of not just suspending, but eliminating, the right of habeas corpus - the seven century-old right of individuals to challenge the terms of their own detention, we could have given the accused one chance - one single chance - to ask the government why they are being held and what they are being charged with.

But politics won today. Politics won. The Administration got its vote, and now it will have its victory lap, and now they will be able to go out on the campaign trail and tell the American people that they were the ones who were tough on the terrorists.

And yet, we have a bill that gives the terrorist mastermind of 9/11 his day in court, but not the innocent people we may have accidentally rounded up and mistaken for terrorists - people who may stay in prison for the rest of their lives.

And yet, we have a report authored by sixteen of our own government's intelligence agencies, a previous draft of which described, and I quote, "...actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay..."

And yet, we have Al Qaeda and the Taliban regrouping in Afghanistan while we look the other way. We have a war in Iraq that our own government's intelligence says is serving as Al Qaeda's best recruitment tool. And we have recommendations from the bipartisan 9/11 commission that we still refuse to implement five years after the fact.

The problem with this bill is not that it's too tough on terrorists. The problem with this bill is that it's sloppy. And the reason it's sloppy is because we rushed it to serve political purposes instead of taking the time to do the job right.

I've heard, for example, the argument that it should be military courts, and not federal judges, who should make decisions on these detainees. I actually agree with that. The problem is that the structure of the military proceedings has been poorly thought through. Indeed, the regulations that are supposed to be governing administrative hearings for these detainees, which should have been issued months ago, still haven't been issued. Instead, we have rushed through a bill that stands a good chance of being challenged once again in the Supreme Court.

This is not how a serious Administration would approach the problem of terrorism. I know the President came here today and was insisting that this is supposed to be our primary concern. He's absolutely right it should be our primary concern - which is why we should be approaching this with a somberness and seriousness that this Administration has not displayed with this legislation.

Now, let me be clear - for those who plot terror against the United States, I hope God has mercy on their soul, because I certainly do not. And for those who our government suspects of terror, I support whatever tools are necessary to try them and uncover their plot.

But we also know that some have been detained who have no connection to terror whatsoever. We've already had reports from the CIA and various generals over the last few years saying that many of the detainees at Guantanamo shouldn't have been there - as one U.S. commander of Guantanamo told the Wall Street Journal, "Sometimes, we just didn't get the right folks." And we all know about the recent case of the Canadian man who was suspected of terrorist connections, detained in New York, sent to Syria, and tortured, only to find out later that it was all a case of mistaken iden y and poor information.

In the future, people like this may never have a chance to prove their innocence. They may remain locked away forever.

And the sad part about all of this is that this betrayal of American values is unnecessary. We could've drafted a bipartisan, well-structured bill that provided adequate due process through the military courts, had an effective review process that would've prevented frivolous lawsuits being filed and kept lawyers from clogging our courts, but upheld the basic ideals that have made this country great.

Instead, what we have is a flawed do ent that in fact betrays the best instincts of some of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle - those who worked in a bipartisan fashion in the Armed Services Committee to craft a bill that we could have been proud of. And they essentially got steamrolled by this Administration and by the imperatives of November 7th.

That is not how we should be doing business in the U.S. Senate, and that's not how we should be prosecuting this war on terrorism. When we're sloppy and cut corners, we are undermining those very virtues of America that will lead us to success in winning this war. At bare minimum, I hope we can at least pass this provision so that cooler heads can prevail after the silly season of politics is over. Thank you.

[boutons_]

Many Rights in U.S. Legal System Absent in New Bill

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 29, 2006; A13

The military trials bill approved by Congress lends legislative support for the first time to broad rules for the detention, interrogation, prosecution and trials of terrorism suspects far different from those in the familiar American criminal justice system.

President Bush's argument that the government requires extraordinary power to respond to the unusual threat of terrorism helped him win final support for a system of military trials with highly truncated defendant's rights. The United States used similar trials on just four occasions: during the country's revolution, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and World War II.

Included in the bill, passed by Republican majorities in the Senate yesterday and the House on Wednesday, are unique rules that bar terrorism suspects from challenging their detention or treatment through traditional habeas corpus pe ions. They allow prosecutors, under certain conditions, to use evidence collected through hearsay or coercion to seek criminal convictions.

The bill rejects the right to a speedy trial and limits the traditional right to self-representation by requiring that defendants accept military defense attorneys.

Panels of military officers need not reach unanimous agreement to win convictions, except in death penalty cases, and appeals must go through a second military panel before reaching a federal civilian court.

By writing into law for the first time the definition of an "unlawful enemy combatant," the bill empowers the executive branch to detain indefinitely anyone it determines to have "purposefully and materially" supported anti-U.S. hostilities. Only foreign nationals among those detainees can be tried by the military commissions, as they are known, and sentenced to decades in jail or put to death.

At the same time, the bill immunizes U.S. officials from prosecution for cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees who the military and the CIA captured before the end of last year. It gives the president a dominant but not exclusive role in setting the rules for future interrogations of terrorism suspects.

( the Repugs have dragged America down to the level of Saddam, Idi Amin, Franco,

Written largely, but not completely, on the administration's terms, with passages that give executive branch officials discretion to set details or divert from its protections, the bill is meant to provide what Bush said yesterday are "the tools" needed to handle terrorism suspects U.S. officials hope to capture.

( big, powerful, beautiful America is now snivelling, cheating, lying, inhumane monster. Thank you, Repugs. May you all be captured by OBL )

For more than 57 months after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush maintained that he did not need congressional authorization of such tools. But the Supreme Court decided otherwise in June, declaring the administration's detainee treatment and trial procedures illegal, and ruling that Bush must first seek Congress's approval.

Now Bush has received much of the authority he desired from party loyalists and a handful of Democrats on Capitol Hill. "The American people need to know we're working together," Bush told senators before yesterday's vote.

But Tom Malinowski, the Washington office director for Human Rights Watch, said that Bush's motivation is partly to protect his reputation by gaining congressional endorsement of controversial actions already taken. "He's been accused of authorizing criminal torture in a way that has hurt America and could come back to haunt our troops. One of his purposes is to have Congress stand with him in the dock," Malinowski said.

The bill contains some protections unavailable to the eight Nazi saboteurs who came ashore in the United States in 1942 and were captured two weeks later. Six were executed that year after a closed military trial on the fifth floor of Justice Department headquarters. That proceeding was upheld by the Supreme Court in a decision it explained two months after the electrocutions.

Under the new procedures, trials are supposed to be open, but can be closed to protect individuals or information expected to harm national security. Defendants have a right to be present, unless they are disruptive, and have the right to examine and respond to the evidence against them. Proof of guilt must exceed a reasonable doubt.

( but "proof" can be hearsay and info extracted by torture )

Many cons utional experts say, however, that the bill pushes at the edges of so much settled U.S. law that its passage will not be the last word on America's detainee policies. They predict it will shift the public debate to the federal courts, a forum where the administration has had less success getting its way on counterterrorism policies.

"This is a full-employment act for lawyers," said Deborah Perlstein, who directs the U.S. Law and Security Program at the New York-based nonprofit group Human Rights First.

Former White House associate counsel Bradford A. Berenson, a supporter of the bill and one of the authors of the rules struck down by the Supreme Court, agreed. "Some of the most creative legal minds are going to be devoted to poking holes in this," he said.

Anticipating court challenges, the administration attempted to make the bill bulletproof by including provisions that would sharply restrict judicial review and limit the application of international treaties -- signed by Washington -- that govern the rights of wartime detainees. The bill also contains blunt assertions that it complies with U.S. treaty obligations.

University of Texas cons utional law professor Sanford V. Levinson described the bill in an Internet posting as the mark of a "banana republic." Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh said that "the image of Congress rushing to strip jurisdiction from the courts in response to a politically created emergency is really quite shocking, and it's not clear that most of the members understand what they've done."

In contrast, Douglas W. Kmiec, a professor of cons utional law at Pepperdine University, said that Congress "did reasonably well in terms of fashioning a fair" set of procedures. But Kmiec and many others say they cannot predict how the Supreme Court will respond to the provision barring habeas corpus rights, which he said will leave "a large body of detainees with no conceivable basis to challenge their detentions."

There are other likely flashpoints. In the Supreme Court's June decision overturning previous administration policies, four members of the court who joined the majority opinion said that conspiracy is not a war crime. The new bill says that it is.

Georgetown University law professor Neal Katyal said the bill's creation of two systems of justice -- military commissions for foreign nationals and regular criminal trials for U.S. citizens -- may violate the Cons ution's 14th Amendment, which requires equal protection of the laws to anyone under U.S. jurisdiction.

"If you're an American citizen, you get the Cadillac system of justice. If you're a foreigner or a green-card holder, you get this beat-up-Chevy version," he said.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

======================

The Repugs are the shame of America, if America had any shame or honor left.

You're doing a heckuva job, dubya

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

The shame of America is dumb s like you who thinks it's a bad idea to treat s like s .

It's pretty simple, don't try and blow up Americans with a bomb strapped to your chest, and the government probably won't be ing with you.

[RandomGuy]

The shame of America is dumb s like you who thinks it's a bad idea to treat s like s .

It's pretty simple, don't try and blow up Americans with a bomb strapped to your chest, and the government probably won't be ing with you.

Unless of course their neighbors turned them in to US forces because they wanted to steal the guy's goats, and not because he actually did anything.

But I guess the ideals our nation was founded on are not something you ascribe to. If you don't like it move, you terrorist-lover.

[Mr. Peabody]

The shame of America is dumb s like you who thinks it's a bad idea to treat s like s .

It's pretty simple, don't try and blow up Americans with a bomb strapped to your chest, and the government probably won't be ing with you.

I'm sure Maher Arar would agree with this statement.

From the Washington Post --

Arar was also listed as "an Islamic extremist individual" who was in the Washington area on Sept. 11. The report concluded that he had no involvement in Islamic extremism and was on business in San Diego that day, said the head of the inquiry commission, Ontario Justice Dennis O'Connor.

Arar, now 36, was detained by U.S. authorities as he changed planes in New York on Sept. 26, 2002. He was held for questioning for 12 days, then flown by jet to Jordan and driven to Syria. He was beaten, forced to confess to having trained in Afghanistan -- where he never has been -- and then kept in a coffin-size dungeon for 10 months before he was released, the Canadian inquiry commission found.

O'Connor concluded that "categorically there is no evidence" that Arar did anything wrong or was a security threat.

[xrayzebra]

Holy Smokes. Molly (the plagiarist) Ivins. You really got to be hurting to post
something she wrote.

I know many of you folks are crying in your beer, cause you wanted the terrorist bill of
rights. But win some lose some.....

[turambar85]

God help us.

Many Christians believe that the end times are a result of war and the degradation of society...well, Mr. Bush doesn't want to die, he wants to be taken up to Heaven in a flaming glory in the rapture.

How can this be rationalized. The one thing that sets us apart is our supposed compassion and loving view towards human rights.

It is not justified to torture one to save the lives of others, and I will stand beside that claim.

And, even if it were justified, we don't know that the 1 is truly what we think he is, and we also dont know if it will end up saving any lives regardless.

It is truly absurd and obscene.

[boutons_]

"treat s like s ."

you mean: "treat non-American, un-tried, un-convicted s like s "

Americans don't treat their tried, convicted, imprisoned s like that, and those s actually have killed and/or raped innocent American civilians.

ie, their "rights" really are, for the Repugs and assorted dubya suckers like yourself and
Yoni, completely "alienable" on whatever whim the Repugs want to alienate those rights.

We already saw how the Repugs invading Iraq on "whims" and "beliefs" and "hearsay" worked out, especially when executed with the mind-boggling incompetence of Repug political operatives and Rummy.

Do you really think the Repug torturers will torture restricted by the Repug laws of toruture? Of course, the Repug torturers will continue torturing captives (who aren't even combatants) to death as they have 20+ times already.

ie, American citizens are better human beings who deserve American rights treatment than non-American, rights-alienated human beings.

Somehow this Repug approach to humanity, somewhat different from what the world has come to expect from the USA, greatly ingratiates moderate Muslims, and the rest of the world, to The Great American Way (as upon by the Repugs).

[Mr. Peabody]

I know many of you folks are crying in your beer, cause you wanted the terrorist bill of
rights. But win some lose some.....

I think what people are worried about are the rights of those who aren't terrorists, but have somehow ended up in the system.

[turambar85]

Holy Smokes. Molly (the plagiarist) Ivins. You really got to be hurting to post
something she wrote.

I know many of you folks are crying in your beer, cause you wanted the terrorist bill of
rights. But win some lose some.....

I personally find it interesting when somebody fails to say what is wrong with something, just makes some quasi-clever name to use as a screaming quotation.

Says a lot about how much they know about the issue.

[xrayzebra]

It will happen. Just as now, innocents do end up in prison under our "just" criminal
law system, where many checks and balances exist. Also many innocents are killed
by the terrorist we are attempting to kill and capture.


stop the holier than thou crap and face what goes on in the real world.

[xrayzebra]

I personally find it interesting when somebody fails to say what is wrong with something, just makes some quasi-clever name to use as a screaming quotation.

Says a lot about how much they know about the issue.

There was never an issue to me. We needed the law to protect those
that were trying to protect you and I.

[boutons_]

"terrorist bill of rights"

no, a human bill of rights, as in:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,"

It doesn't say "all American citizens are created equal"

[FromWayDowntown]

It will happen. Just as now, innocents do end up in prison under our "just" criminal law system, where many checks and balances exist.

Without a meaningful opportunity to seek habeas, what checks and balances are there? If someone who has been imprisoned has no opportunity to ask the government to bring his case to trial, to ask that the government assert its charges against him, to ask that he be shown the evidence against him, he's essentially a prisoner for so long as our government decides to hold him, whether he's done anything wrong or not. That's hardly a just criminal system and it's certainly not one that incorporates any checks or balances.

Also many innocents are killed by the terrorist we are attempting to kill and capture.

So, as a result, we are justified in endlessly imprisioning and torturing some who are innocents?

[Mr. Peabody]

It will happen. Just as now, innocents do end up in prison under our "just" criminal
law system, where many checks and balances exist. Also many innocents are killed
by the terrorist we are attempting to kill and capture.


stop the holier than thou crap and face what goes on in the real world.

I agree that it will happen. That's my point.

You do not have to throw the baby out with the bath water on this issue. It is possible to have a system that sees that justice is carried out, while protecting the rights of the innocent.

As far as stopping my "holier than thou crap" and facing "what goes on in the real world," I do see what goes on in the real world. I see it everyday. And quite frankly, that is what concerns me about the abrogation of these rights.

[Ya Vez]

can't help those democrats.. they are a little slow.....

What is rendition?

Developed in the mid-1990s during the Clinton administration, the CIA's rendition program allowed the agency to capture high-value targets anywhere in the world and bring them to a third country for interrogation. Critics argue that rendition is "outsourcing torture"; suspects are believed to have been taken to countries including Egypt, Morocco, Syria and Jordan, which have all been accused by the U.S. State Department and human rights organizations of torture.

[Ocotillo]

The following Democrats voted for this uncons utional legislation.

Tom Carper (Del.)
Tim Johnson (S.D.)
Mary Landrieu (La.)
Frank Lautenberg (N.J.)
Joe Lieberman (Conn.)
Bob Menendez (N.J)
Bill Nelson (Fla.)
Ben Nelson (Neb.)
Pryor (Ark.)
Jay Rockefeller (W. Va.)
Ken Salazar (Co.)
Debbie Stabenow (Mich.)

Shame on everyone one of the them for the moral cowardice they exhibit with this vote. Pat Leahy said that within the caucas the Dems who would not support a fillibuster were fearful what happened to Max Cleland would happen to them.

There are things that are of greater importance than winning an election and this is clearly one of them. These people stained the reputation of America in exchange so the Republicans wouldn't run negative ads against them. Guess what cowards, they will anyway.

For over two centuries we have been able to fight all enemies of this country without sacrificing the rights that separated this country from every other one of the face of the earth. Now we are expected to give up habeas because extremists wish us harm?

Now we have to stoop to the same methods of the sworn enemies of this country to try and extract confessions or information?

Buried in this bill is American citizens can be treated the same as foreign terrorists. Now Bush will be able to have the thugs come to your door, take you in the middle of the night to a secret prison and hold you indefinitely without due process or counsel. All that has to be done is you declared a terrorist. And we are not that far from people who oppose this administration within this country being declared terrorists.

This is a disaster........

[RandomGuy]

It will happen. Just as now, innocents do end up in prison under our "just" criminal
law system, where many checks and balances exist. Also many innocents are killed
by the terrorist we are attempting to kill and capture.


stop the holier than thou crap and face what goes on in the real world.

The real world has eveything to do with the ideals you spit on in this post.

We are nothing without those ideals.

[boutons_]

"We are nothing without those ideals."

These Repugs are proving themselves to be truly, value-free "nothing", extremely un-American. The Repugs have allowed America to be dragged down to the level of Saddam, Franco, and banana republic dictators.

[RandomGuy]

"terrorist bill of rights"

no, a human bill of rights, as in:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,"

It doesn't say "all American citizens are created equal"

Exactly.

These rights are given to all by God himself.

To deny them to someone based on the fact they aren't an American citizen, is to deny someone of their God-given humanity.

It is not for us to choose who is denied these rights. If they are suitable for one, they are suitable for all, regardless of the evil in their souls. To believe any less denies some very basic principles.