in authoritarian USA, corporations are people, kidnapped Muslims aren't

Posted on: Sun, 10/05/2014 - 10:31 By: Tom Swiss

Guantanamo remains a national shame, and failing to close it is near the top of Obama's crimes (below only his murders by drone).

Who Are ‘We the People’?

IN holding that corporations had religious rights, the Hobby Lobby decision sat in contrast to a case I brought under the same statute in 2004, in which the court found that Muslims at Guantánamo Bay were not persons and had no religious rights.

...

To me, the case seemed open-and-shut. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (R.F.R.A.), which was passed in 1993, prohibits the government from “substantially” burdening “a person’s exercise of religion” unless it serves some important government interest that cannot be accomplished in any other way....

The Federal District Court in Washington, which first heard the case, agreed that “R.F.R.A. expressly protects the religious exercise of ‘persons,’ a broadly applicable term, commonly including aliens.” But the government appealed and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that, as aliens held outside the United States, these men were not “persons” after all. The Bush administration had put them offshore precisely to ensure this.