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Mike Gravel on Civil Liberties and Domestic Security
This candidate has withdrawn from the election
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."