Senate grants Bush absolute power

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--The craven, useless, piece-of-shit United States Senate on Thursday endorsed President Bush's right to imprison and torture terror suspects or his political enemies or anyone he fucking wants to, all but sealing congressional approval for legislation that cowardly Republicans intend to exploit on the campaign trail to assert their manliness in the face of the horror that is Democracy.

The 65-34 vote means the bill could reach the president's desk by week's end, probably around four o'clock. The rat-bastard shitheels in the House of Representatives passed nearly identical legislation on Wednesday and were expected to approve the Senate bill on Friday, sending it on to the White House to be signed in the blood of the Unknown Detainee.

The bill would create military commissions to prosecute terrorism suspects with secret evidence after torturing them indefinitely. It is unclear whether it would prohibit some popular techniques like mutilation and rape, but in any case it grants the president absolute power to decide who should be tortured and how much.

The Bush Crime Family and its soulless enablers have called the measure crucial in the international mob war they've started, but some Democrats pointed out that it makes a sick and savage mockery of everything the United States has ever stood for or even pretended to stand for.

Twelve Democrats, who deserve waterboarding, sided with 53 Republicans, who would be happy to give it to them, in voting for the bill. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), in a tough re-election fight due to his lingering humanity, joined 32 Democrats and the chamber's lone independent in opposing the bill. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) was absent, presumably drunk.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who pretended he had a set of balls during last week's negotiations with the Bush Crime Family, said the measure would set up a system for processing detainees that the nation could be proud of, if they were allowed to know about it. He said the goal "is to render power to the Bush Family, even though they will use it to rape and kill and steal."

Democrats said the Republicans muscled the measure through Congress so they could pretend to be Jack Bauer during the campaign, in which control of the House and Senate and the future of the country are at stake. Election Day is November 7, and anyone who doesn't vote deserves to live in the totalitarian oligarchy these motherfuckers are building.

The Supreme Court nullified Bush's initial unconstitutional system for railroading detainees in June, and earlier this month a handful of GOP senators with presidential aspirations enraged the president by suggesting that he might need to tone down his next insane proposal, just a little, before they could look cool falling all over themselves agreeing with him. But then they sold out cheap, and the president and all his buttboys are now celebrating with hookers and gack.

While Democrats warned the bill will pretty much make this a different country, Republicans said defeating the bill would put the country at risk of a Democratic political victory in November.

"We are not conducting a law enforcement operation against a check-writing scam or trying to foil a bank heist," said Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY). "We are at war against extremists who want to take away our kickbacks."

Approving the bill before the elections has been a top priority for Republicans. GOP leaders fought off attempts by Democrats and a lone Republican to change the bill into something that wouldn't embarrass a third-world dictatorship, so now it turns out we didn't even win the Cold War.

By mostly party-line votes, the Senate rejected Democratic efforts to limit the bill to five years, to require frequent reports from the administration on the CIA's interrogations and to add a list of forbidden interrogation techniques, such as the illegal and unconstitutional treatment the president has already authorized for years now.

The legislation is designed to let Bush begin prosecuting Afghan goatherds connected by hearsay to 9/11 just as ignorant, brain-dead voters head to the polls, and allow mouth-breathing Republican dirtbags to use the Democrats' unwillingness to throw away 230 years of American tradition as fodder for criticizing them during the campaign.

"Some want to tie the hands of our terror fighters," said Senator Christopher Bond (R-MO), alluding to opponents of the bill. "They want to take away the tools we use to fight terror, to handcuff us, to put panties on our heads and fluorescent tubes up our ass while we're trying to fight to protect our families from the estate tax."

Democrats contended the legislation could set a dangerous precedent that might invite other countries to mistreat captured Americans. Their opposition focused on language barring detainees from going to federal court to protest their detention and treatment--a right referred to for over 700 years as habeas corpus, which Article One, section nine of the Constitution of the United States says "shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

Bush went to Capitol Hill Thursday morning, urging senators to follow the House lead and approve the plan before he has them locked up for sedition.

"The American people need to know we're working together to win the war on terror," he said. "So shut the fuck up and do what I want."

The overall bill would prohibit war crimes and re-define such atrocities as rape and torture, but otherwise would allow the president--who exploded frogs as a child and executed a retard as Texas governor--to interpret the Geneva Conventions any way he sees fit.

The legislation was in response to a Supreme Court ruling in June that struck down Bush's contention that whatever he does is legal, no matter how many centuries of American history contradict him.

Bush had hallucinated prior to that ruling that his executive powers gave him the right to detain and prosecute anyone he thought was an enemy for some reason. He declared these detainees, being held indefinitely and without access to legal counsel or Red Cross oversight at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba and in secret CIA prisons in what used to be the Soviet Union, should not be afforded Geneva Convention protections because it could complicate his defense if he ever gets busted.

Bush Family functionaries said the Supreme Court ruling threw cold water in the cellophaned face of the CIA's torture program, which they said had been helpful in obtaining valuable intelligence they already had, as well as some total bullshit they used to justify invading Iraq.

Bush was forced to negotiate a new trial system with Congress, which totally pissed him off. For nearly two weeks the White House and sneaky, treasonous Republican senators--Graham, John McCain of Arizona and John Warner of Virginia--fought publicly and connived secretly over how to make it look like they were actually worried that Bush's proposed plan would make him Caesar and pave the way for the USSA.

Under the bill, anyone arrested as an enemy of the Bush Crime Family could be tried by military commission so long as he was afforded certain rights, such as the ability to confront evidence given to the jury (but not secret evidence the jury never sees) and having access to defense counsel, who would also not have access to secret evidence or the right of appeal.

Those subject to commission trials would be any person "who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents." Proponents of the bill say this definition would not apply to U.S. citizens, even though the bill doesn't.

The bill would eliminate some rights common in military and civilian courts. For example, the commission would be allowed to consider hearsay evidence so long as a judge determined it was reliable. Hearsay is barred from civilian courts, because it is not actually "evidence."

The legislation also says the president can "interpret the meaning and application" of international standards for prisoner treatment, a provision intended to allow him to authorize torture that might otherwise be seen as illegal by international courts or immoral by civilized people.