In November 2005, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham offered an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act. That amendment, which was passed by the Senate in a 49 to 42 vote gave the Secretary of Defense (and through him, the President of the United States) the power to imprison people in secret foreign gulags without giving them any legal rights. The amendment further made it illegal for any judge to make any ruling about the treatment of those prisoners.

In effect, Senator Graham's amendment to the Defense Authorization Act put the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United States above the law, free to put any non-American in any prison and do anything to that prisoner, including torture, and be protected from prosecution.

In other words, Senator Graham's amendment made President Bush into a dictator.

You can read more about Senator Graham's grant of dictatorial power and its motivations on the Irregular Times blog.

What this page is concerned with is letting the American people know which members of the United States Senate went along with Senator Graham's despicable plan to undermine American democracy and give Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush the kind of powers that are only granted to dictators. The information is below. Now, you can know: Did your senators vote to revoke the right to habeas corpus? Did your senators vote to give Rumsfeld and Bush the power of dictators?

Next to the name of each senator is the senator's email and telephone number. We're making it easy for you to do your duty, to call up both your senators (every American has two), and tell them what you think of their vote on Senator Graham's amendment, for good and for ill. We won't tell you what to say. You know what you think, and can express it best of all.

This information comes from our progressive scorecard of the US Senate, where we keep track of the votes of senators on many important issues, so you can know where your senators really stand, sound bites and frilly speeches aside.

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