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Mike Gravel on Civil Liberties and Domestic Security

Civil liberties are the freedoms and rights that protect individuals from government abuse. Civil liberty and domestic security concerns generally involve the rights granted to the federal government to involve them self in the private lives of citizens. With a greater concern for terrorism in the US and an increase in technological capacity for surveillance, this issue has played a large role in US foreign and domestic policy. This topic includes information about candidate positions on such issues as: the Patriot Act, the federal government's surveillance powers, and rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

The issues

Mike Gravel strongly opposes the 2006 extension of the Patriot Act

"What is your position on the Patriot Act? That it is illegal and unconstitutional to eliminate or weaken government checks and balances. The federal government cannot just eradicate judicial process. Once again, the Democrats are guilty of complicity with the illegalities of the Bush administration. Russ Feingold is the only Democratic Senator to have originally voted against it."

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Mike Gravel strongly opposes giving the federal government more domestic surveillance power

"Americans think the danger is terrorists. They don't understand. Terrorists cannot take away habeus corpus, or the bill of rights, or the constitution, they cannot suspend constitutional government, abolish the separation of powers... the terrorists are not anything like the threat we face to the bill of rights and the constitution from our own government, in the name of fighting terrorism. Americans just don't understand that, or at least a majority don't."

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Mike Gravel strongly supports extending the right of habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees

"The Constitution is very clear that prisoners of war are the responsibility of the Congress. The Bush administration has unlawfully taken that power without Constitutional justification. The Congress has been derelict in its duty to see that enemy combatants are treated humanely within the guidelines of the Geneva Conventions, and has been equally neglectful in its response to the President's unlawful use of torture."

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Mike Gravel strongly opposes the use of interrogation methods that cause physical or emotional suffering

"The practice of torture is immoral. It is un-American and it is ineffective. Information acquired as a result of torture techniques in unreliable. It endangers our soldiers in combat by encouraging reciprocity. It inflicts irreversible damage to our nation's image and undermines our credibility among the international community."

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