My blog entry on this is a few days late, but what does it matter for the 2.3 million Americans who languish in the prisons and jails of this country? They have plenty of time on their hands.

The Washington Post article last Thursday, New High In U.S. Prison Numbers, grabbed some headlines and commentary in the following days. But soon, all too soon, the revelations will grow stale, the stuff of old news, and the millions of prisoners placed safely not only behind bars, but out of sight and mind, can return to their quotidian lives of ongoing despair and impotent frustration. The Pew Report that generated the recent headlines is available here.

N.C. Aizenman writes at the WP:

More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year and the federal government $5 billion more, according to a report released yesterday.

With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.

The growth in prison population is largely because of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been particularly affected: One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women ages 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 for white women in the same age group.

How can such figures mesh with any view of the U.S. as a country of free men and women? You don’t have to be a penal expert to know that besides having a racist justice system, the rise in incarceration is due to obscene drug laws, mandatory minimum sentencing, the draconian three-strikes-and-you’re-out laws passed by demagogic politicians and a frightened populace, and petty, tyrannical probation enforcement. As a result, there are more than one million non-violent offenders locked away in the U.S. prison system. Jailing people is a big industry in the U.S., and like any capitalist enterprise, the prison-industrial complex is always seeking new markets and greater expansion.

One fast growing area of prison expansion concerns the INS jailing of immigrants to the U.S. Some of these are asylum seekers, fleeing persecution in their native lands, and held in indefinite detention at public, and increasingly, at private prisons throughout the country. An estimated 1.6 million immigrants are detained at some point in their immigration hearings. From a report by CorpWatch:

As the government invokes national security to sweep up and jail an unprecedented number of immigrants, the private-prison industry is booming. In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks on New York, immigrants have become the fastest growing segment of the prison population in the U.S. today. In fiscal year 2005, more than 350,000 immigrants went through the courts.  “A growing share of them committed no crimes while in the United States – 53 percent this year, up from 37 percent in 2001 – even though Bush administration officials repeatedly have said their priority is deporting criminals,” the Denver Post reported….

The government claims that locking up people without legal status is the only way to ensure that they do not disappear into the country. A December 2004 DHS report from the Office of the Inspector General concluded that all the evidence proved the “importance of detention in relation to the eventual removal of an alien. Hence effective management of detention bed space can substantially contribute to immigration enforcement efforts.”

The speed and scope of the Bush administration round up and jailing of non-citizens created a dramatically increased need for immigrant detention space. And saved the flailing corrections industry.

One example of this new privatization of prisons is the new prison built by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), “one of the nation’s biggest prison companies”, in Florence, Arizona:

The complex in Florence is part of a 300-facility-strong network of immigrant incarceration facilities. The average time an immigrant is detained is 42.5 days from arrest to deportation. At $85 a day per detainee, that adds up to $3,612.50 per person. In 2003, DHS was holding 231,500 detainees, and the budget to cover this was $1.3 billion. Since 2001, the DHS budget for detention bed space has increased each fiscal year as has the number of beds. In 2003 there was more than $50 million slated for the construction of immigrant jails….

For the second quarter of 2005, CCA announced that its revenue had increased three percent over last year, for a total of almost $300 million. CCA calculates that it expenditure of $28.89 per inmate, per day allows it to make a daily profit of $50.26 per inmate….

Business is good for CCA and the more people it stuffs into its prisons the better it becomes. “As you know, the first 100 inmates into a facility, we lose money, and the last 100 inmates into a facility we make a lot of money.” CCA Chief Financial Officer Irving Lingo said on a 2006 company conference call.

This trafficking in prisoners demonstrates how deep the moral rot has penetrated this society. The U.S. as a society has truly lost its soul. The leaders of this country seem to be bound and determined to realize concretely the Rousseau’s prophecy made in the years before both the French and American Revolutions:

Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains.

The entire subject is almost too much to bear, if you are a thinking and feeling person. It took a great poet, namely George Gordon, Lord Byron, to take the experience of unjust imprisonment and make art of it. I close with his “Sonnet on Chillon,” written in 1816, It was inspired by Bryon’s visit to the castle at Chillon, on the shores of Lake Geneva, where Charles III, Duke of Savoy had imprisoned the monk and political prisoner, François Bonivard, underground for six years. The poem was written as a preface to a longer poem, “The Prisoner of Chillon.”

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,

For there in thy habitation is the heart

The heart which love of thee alone can bind;

And when thy sons to fetters are consign’d –

To fetters, and the damp vault’s dayless gloom

Their country conquers with their martyrdom,

And Freedom’s fame finds wings on every wind.

Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,

And thy sad floor an altar – for t’was trod

Until his very steps have left a trace

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod

By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface!

For they appeal from tyranny to God.

Adapted from an original posting at Invictus

(10 am – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Republicans have been gang-raping the Constitution since December 12, 2000, when five Supreme Court justices appointed George W. Bush President of the United States. The BushCheney crime family’s brutal assault on the nation’s founding document began immediately, and was cheered on and supported by a Republican-led Congress that whooped in drunken bloodlust every time the administration flagrantly violated the highest law of the land.

The Republican Congress cheered encouragement every time Americans’ civil liberties were violated. The Republican Congress roared approval at every demeaning abuse of the rule of law. They pushed to the front of the mob any time there was an opportunity to have their own crack at the battered, dazed body politic, who couldn’t believe what was happening to it, who couldn’t believe that it could be violated so relentlessly, so repeatedly, so thoroughly, over and over and over again, and no one put a stop to it.

A few Democrats in Congress shouted – from the back of the mob, their voices barely heard – their objection to the ugly scene being played out in front of the world. They tried raising the idea of censure; a few pressed for impeachment of the administration. But given that the members of the crazed Republican mob outnumbered the Democrats, it seemed nothing could stop the rape from continuing until the Constitution was nothing more than a barely-breathing document, a hollow, shattered remnant of its former self.

And all the while, the Republicans who were gang-raping the Constitution smirked and grinned and defied anyone to stop them.

And like the sadistic, sick, abusive rapists they are, Republican fear mongers liked to blame the victim. They said that the Constitution was getting in the way of protecting Americans. It’s the Constitution’s fault that we need to violate the Constitution, they would say. If it weren’t for the Constitution, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion about our violating your constitutional rights.

After nearly six years of such repeated and flagrant violations, a lot of people had had enough of the Constitution’s brutal treatment at the hands of the vile, criminal, power-drunk Republican mob. These people thought the best way to put an end to the gang rape of the Constitution would be for Democrats to take control of Congress. Once Democrats had control of Congress, these people believed, the Constitution would be safe. Once Democrats had control of Congress, these people believed, the violation would end. Once Democrats had control of Congress, these people believed, the Democrats would actually do what members of Congress are sworn to do: protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

The idea was that Democrats, who previously had lacked sufficient numbers to do much more than shout objections from the back of the mob, or maybe occasionally to grab the arm of one or other criminal member of the administration who had just had their way with the law and the Constitution, detaining them just long enough to voice their strong disapproval, would have enough power to put an end to the assault. Until then, it seemed all Democrats could do was to strongly object. “At least we tried,” Democrats could tell themselves and their constituents.  “At least we spoke up.  At least we made an effort to stop it.”  

So a lot of people worked very hard to put Democrats in control of Congress in November 2006. That way, Democrats would no longer have to settle for “trying” – they could actually put an end to the gang rape of the Constitution.

But then the Democratic Congress voted to approve failed to overturn the Military Commissions Act, which gave the administration a free pass on torture. And then the Democratic Congress let the administration ignore subpoenas – a lot of subpoenas. And then the Democratic Congress allowed the BushCheney administration to get away with lying about the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. And then the Democratic Congress allowed the BushCheney administration to lie about the nuclear threat posed by Iran. And then the Democratic Congress allowed the BushCheney administration to obstruct congressional investigations by destroying or “losing” evidence.

And now the Democratic Congress is about to allow phone companies and the administration to violate the law and the rights of American citizens. And the only possible reason they are doing that is because –

– they want to get in on the rape.

Democrats in Congress want to join in the gang rape of the Constitution.

After we had elected them to Congress believing that they would stop that rape.

But we were wrong.

It seems that what Democrats really wanted was not to gain sufficient strength to wade into the crowd and break up the rape that had been ongoing for six long years – no.

No, it seems that what Democrats wanted was to have sufficient numbers to push to the front of the crowd so they could watch from a better vantage point the repeated violations of the Constitution and the rule of law.

But now, evidently, even that front row seat is not enough.  Now Democrats want to get in on the action.  They want to have a few shots at the Constitution themselves.  They don’t want to look like party poopers, like goodie two-shoes, to their Republican colleagues. Let me prove how tough I am, is their thinking.

Move over, they say – let me have a shot at her.

I am sick.

In his famous “Give me liberty or give me death” speech, Patrick Henry uttered words that underpin his more well-known ultimatum. I believe his words are worth considering today. Now that congressional Democrats have shown their mettle and have told this administration and the world that not only is it OK to illegally wiretap Americans, but that it’s OK to torture, too, all in the supposed name of “keeping America safe,” what Patrick Henry – a true patriot who faced the very real, not imagined, loss of his life, liberty and property – said in 1775 bears reflection today:

Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope.

If we wish to be free — if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending — if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak — unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? . . .

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?

The gang raping of the Constitution that has been taking place for six years under the Bush administration, at every level, by every agency, without exception, was supposed to have been stopped by the Democratic Congress. It has not been. In fact, just the opposite has happened: With the passage of a FISA bill that gives the OK to illegal electronic surveillance on Americans, Democrats in Congress will be active participants in the rape of the Constitution of the United States of America.

Providing amnesty for violations of federal law under FISA serves no constituency save one:

American citizens aren’t asking for it.

Security experts aren’t asking for it.

Even the telephone companies aren’t asking for it.

There is only one constituency that is clamoring for passage of the FISA Bill in its current form: the gang rapists in the BushCheney administration and its cheerleaders, the same group that has violated, over and over and over for seven years now, the Constitution of the United States of America.

And now that loathsome group evidently will include many Democrats.

UPDATED: Thanks to Major Danby in the comments.

Also available in Orange