ight direction today. Dodd will introduce legislation to amend

the recently-passed Military Commissions Act of 2006 — aka the Bush Torture

Bill, because of the powers of detention and prisoner abuse it affords

George W. Bush — in an attempt to make it look like a law that actually

represents the United States we all know and love.

³We in Congress have our own obligation, to work in a bipartisan way to

repair the damage that has been done, to protect our international

reputation, to preserve our domestic traditions, and to provide a successful

mechanism to improve and enhance the tools required by the global war on

terror,² Dodd said yesterday.

Dodd, an outspoken opponent of the Military Commission Act , will go to the

Senate floor today to introduce the Effective Terrorists Prosecution Act

which will, according to Dodd’s office, “Šensure that U.S. servicemen and

women are afforded the maximum protection of a strong international legal

framework guaranteed by respect for such provisions as the Geneva

Conventions and other international standards.”

The Connecticut Democrat’s legislation is also intended to restore some of

the moral authority America lost with the rest of the world when it gave the

U.S. government’s executive branch the sweeping ability to breach civil

liberties in a manner more like a dictatorship than a democracy.

“It¹s clear the people who perpetrated these horrendous crimes against our

country and our people have no moral compass and deserve to be prosecuted to

the full extent of the law,” said Dodd. “But in taking away their legal

rights, the rights first codified in our country¹s Constitution, we¹re

taking away our own moral compass, as well.²

Among other things, the Effective Terrorists Prosecution Act will do the

following:

Restore Habeas Corpus protections to detainees

Narrow the definition of unlawful enemy combatant to individuals who

directly participate in hostilities against the United States who are not

lawful combatants

Bar information gained through coercion from being introduced as evidence in

trials

Empower military judges to exclude hearsay evidence they deem to be

unreliable

Authorize the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces to review decisions

by the Military commissions

Limit the authority of the President to interpret the meaning and

application of the Geneva Conventions and makes that authority subject to

congressional and judicial oversight

Provide for expedited judicial review of the Military Commissions Act to

determine the constitutionally of its provisions

Many Americans have bought into right-wing spin that says Democrats don¹t

like Bush’s torture bill because they want to “protect the rights of the

terrorists.” This is because Team Bush has carefully hidden the ugly truth

behind this law — that the power it grants would allow the Bush

administration to pluck any American off the street, declare them an enemy

combatant and hold them without counsel and without other Constitutional

protections.

Said Dodd yesterday: ³I take a backseat to no one when it comes to

protecting this country from terrorists. But there is a right way to do this

and a wrong way to do this.”

**************

George Farah called my attention to this piece:

WSJ.com OpinionJournal

Class Struggle

American workers have a chance to be heard.

BY JIM WEBB

Wednesday, November 15, 2006 12:01 a.m.

The most important–and unfortunately the least debated–issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.

Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve compensation packages for chief executives and others that are out of logic’s range. As this newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10 million a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been raised in nearly a decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much.

In the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future. Trickle-down economics didn’t happen. Despite the vaunted all-time highs of the stock market, wages and salaries are at all-time lows as a percentage of the national wealth. At the same time, medical costs have risen 73% in the last six years alone. Half of that increase comes from wage-earners’ pockets rather than from insurance, and 47 million Americans have no medical insurance at all.

Manufacturing jobs are disappearing. Many earned pension programs have collapsed in the wake of corporate “reorganization.” And workers’ ability to negotiate their futures has been eviscerated by the twin threats of modern corporate America: If they complain too loudly, their jobs might either be outsourced overseas or given to illegal immigrants.

This ever-widening divide is too often ignored or downplayed by its beneficiaries. A sense of entitlement has set in among elites, bordering on hubris. When I raised this issue with corporate leaders during the recent political campaign, I was met repeatedly with denials, and, from some, an overt lack of concern for those who are falling behind. A troubling arrogance is in the air among the nation’s most fortunate. Some shrug off large-scale economic and social dislocations as the inevitable byproducts of the “rough road of capitalism.” Others claim that it’s the fault of the worker or the public education system, that the average American is simply not up to the international challenge, that our education system fails us, or that our workers have become spoiled by old notions of corporate paternalism.

Still others have gone so far as to argue that these divisions are the natural results of a competitive society. Furthermore, an unspoken insinuation seems to be inundating our national debate: Certain immigrant groups have the “right genetics” and thus are natural entrants to the “overclass,” while others, as well as those who come from stock that has been here for 200 years and have not made it to the top, simply don’t possess the necessary attributes.

Most Americans reject such notions. But the true challenge is for everyone to understand that the current economic divisions in society are harmful to our future. It should be the first order of business for the new Congress to begin addressing these divisions, and to work to bring true fairness back to economic life. Workers already understand this, as they see stagnant wages and disappearing jobs.

America’s elites need to understand this reality in terms of their own self-interest. A recent survey in the Economist warned that globalization was affecting the U.S. differently than other “First World” nations, and that white-collar jobs were in as much danger as the blue-collar positions which have thus far been ravaged by outsourcing and illegal immigration. That survey then warned that “unless a solution is found to sluggish real wages and rising inequality, there is a serious risk of a protectionist backlash” in America that would take us away from what they view to be the “biggest economic stimulus in world history.”

More troubling is this: If it remains unchecked, this bifurcation of opportunities and advantages along class lines has the potential to bring a period of political unrest. Up to now, most American workers have simply been worried about their job prospects. Once they understand that there are (and were) clear alternatives to the policies that have dislocated careers and altered futures, they will demand more accountability from the leaders who have failed to protect their interests. The “Wal-Marting” of cheap consumer products brought in from places like China, and the easy money from low-interest home mortgage refinancing, have softened the blows in recent years. But the balance point is tipping in both cases, away from the consumer and away from our national interest.

The politics of the Karl Rove era were designed to distract and divide the very people who would ordinarily be rebelling against the deterioration of their way of life. Working Americans have been repeatedly seduced at the polls by emotional issues such as the predictable mantra of “God, guns, gays, abortion and the flag” while their way of life shifted ineluctably beneath their feet. But this election cycle showed an electorate that intends to hold government leaders accountable for allowing every American a fair opportunity to succeed.

With this new Congress, and heading into an important presidential election in 2008, American workers have a chance to be heard in ways that have eluded them for more than a decade. Nothing is more important for the health of our society than to grant them the validity of their concerns. And our government leaders have no greater duty than to confront the growing unfairness in this age of globalization.

Mr. Webb is the Democratic senator-elect from Virginia.