Congress Just Deleted Habeas Corpus from the Constitution on Its Website | Hacker News Reader

Congress Just Deleted Habeas Corpus from the Constitution on Its Website

abovethelaw.com

58 pointsakudha41 comments

Flagged because it is obviously an error since corrected, because this is not an authoritative source nor meant to be one on the text of the Constitution as the fundamental law of the United States, and primarily because if these are the kinds of tea leaves you feel the need to invent in 2025, you are better off talking seriously with a professional about your anxiety disorder, because the republic is really in far worse shape than to find leisure for such comedy would suggest you understand.

How does an error that specific happen on accident?

Trivially, of course. To purport otherwise as this author has leads me to think, not remotely for the first time lately, that people would be wiser more often to heed labels saying things like "take with food" and "do not operate heavy machinery." (This last is a stretch, I grant you, but I've seen what folks in their 20s call upper body strength these days, and any mechanical keyboard with a steel baseplate likely now qualifies.)

I anticipate with mild annoyance your like insistence on calling my claim, that this is an example basically of a US government employee half-assing a job that sucks and they hate, a "conspiracy theory." It isn't, of course. It's just that I understand what to be afraid of and you don't, so you're constantly terrified and incapable to reacting to any development other than as a kicked dog, and I'm Wittgenstein's lion. Oh, not for the sake of the damned mangy cat! But there's nothing I can say that you are able to understand, not at the moment at least.

You're way too scared for today and not nearly enough for half a decade from now, when we'll all be wishing we had made the most of this time while we had it. You could do better, but you probably won't, because even right now you're wasting the same time being angry at me for tossing off a read like this.

your prompt could use some tuning

Thank you! :smile: Can you recommend any specific enhancements or changes that might improve my next response? :student:

> Trivially, of course

But how though?

That's supposed to be a static piece of text. Nobody should be required to do work on it, nobody should have access to work on it, unless the actual constitution changes.

How the hell am I supposed to know? It's never been my job to redesign, maintain, or otherwise care about that website, thank goodness. Presumably their CMS sucks in one or more of the same ways as any other.

Again, that's a static piece of text, no CMS needed. I'm all for not attributing to malice what can be equally explained by incompetence, but it's been many administrations in charge of this website and somehow it never happened before. I'd say that some eyebrows need to be raised.

Five out of 46 administrations is "many?" But sure, I can see that you'd feel that way. I'm just saying it's a really silly thing to feel that way about, versus the many much better reasons for similar trepidation you imagine yourself escaping by avoiding the news.

“Caring about things is dumb” is such a lame response to “at least thirty years of government didn’t fuck this up, so why is this one so incompetent that it did.”

The language you use to dismiss the concern is certainly cute, but maybe put down the thesaurus for a bit. It’s not doing you the favor you think it is.

Who said caring about things is dumb? I'm saying it's pointless and unhealthy to make a big deal out of this nonsense, which is totally irrelevant to the ongoing destruction of the republic and concurrent real collapse of American hegemony throughout the world. That is a big deal. This is chickenshit.

The Constitution is not being curtailed by mere edits to a website, and only a child could imagine otherwise. But if you think I'm being an asshole about it, you can say so without the circumlocution.

It wasn't that 'specific'. The part left out started in the middle of section 8 with "To provide and maintain a Navy;"

Do you think the current administration is wanting to remove its ability to provide and maintain a Navy?

Looks like a simple copy/paste error to me.

Sure seems like preparation. Having multiple versions of it floating around creates ambiguity and chaos

As a certain someone is fond of saying

FAKE NEWS

good conspiracy theory fodder but occam's razor says just a dumb mistake.

ironically this would be a great way to draw attention to the missing section rather than bury it.

> Because the sketchy sedition hobbyists are the ones running Congress now.

Yeah, ok...

A website obviously isn't the Constitution nor the law.

Dumb, over-sensationalized, rage-baiting hit piece. Move along...

Maybe. Or maybe it does signal intent. Either way it’s a valid reaction to a stupid edit.

This article is attempting to read into something that is much more likely nothing... some intern clicked the wrong button or whatever.

Again, the website has zero impact on the law. It literally doesn't matter.

Is there a delete habeas corpus button? The specific search the current administration happens to be hitting legal challenges on?

All of this heavy breathing leaves out that the edit also deletes the U.S. Navy, I mean, if it had any legally binding impact, which thankfully, a website does not.

I've heard ideas I liked less. Let's give the damned airedales back to the Army while we're at it, hey? Buncha fancified cavalry-wannabe jagoffs, they've had swelled heads for fifty years.

“Legally Binding” is determined by the courts. The process of overturning sections of the constitution start with claiming they were never there.

The current admin spent months saying the 14th amendment essentially isn’t valid, so they could justify it to their base once they got SCOTUS to overturn birthright citizenship, despite it being plainly enumerated in the 14th amendment.

Yes because it's fun to take legal texts and change them in interesting ways and post them to authoritative sites

"It's just a prank bro"

Yeah why would an administration that is doing mass illegal deportations without due process want to remove freely available information on Habeas Corpus from their websites?

Clearly dumb and very sensationalized! Nothing to see here!

Because it's not published in a million other places? Because it's now officially not the law because it's not on this one particular website?

Come on people... you're being rage-baited to hell.

You keep harping on the point that the laws haven't changed. Nobody is arguing that. But how would the average person access the text of the constitution?

Should they not expect to find the full text on the official government website for the constitution?

If I search "US constitution" and congress.gov is the first result, am I dumb for reading that source and believing that is the full text?

If I am detained illegally by ICE and I try to inform myself of my constitutional rights through the official government channels, and am not informed of my right to due process, have I been successfully ragebaited?

> But how would the average person access the text of the constitution?

Right, because the average person googles the constitution right away when they are arrested?

What are you going to do with this googled info? Show it to the officer and get released? What reality is this even?

Nothing on this website changes anything... so yes, you are being very successfully rage baited, to the literal max. Just look how outraged over nothing you are... getting all worked up over a website on a Wednesday afternoon. You'll probably stew on this all day, even complain to others about it.

Rage baited, indeed.

Lol this guy thinks ICE detainees are getting lawyers

So please explain for us, how googling this information from one particular website changes your fictitious scenario with ICE detainees?

Lol this guy thinks the executive has bothered pretending we had a functioning legislature since about March

> You'll probably stew on this all day, even complain to others about it.

Grow up.

The local Library...

Cornell University's annotated Constitution website...

A physical copy in their personal set of books...

And yes you've been successfully rage-baited, as the site problems were over an hour ago. All the text and missing commentary is back up. From the site: "The Constitution Annotated website is currently experiencing data issues. We are working to resolve this issue and regret the inconvenience."

I can hear the face-palming now...

Obviously this has no legal bearing.

The question is why was this removed?

If a simple accident then this is a non-story.

If deliberate, then we must understand what was the chain of command and the motivation for deleting references to habeas corpus on this government website.

And it's an administration that has a history of trying to rewrite history and deny reality when it conflicts with their goals. And regularly claims fundamental parts of the constitution are "unconstitutional" somehow and are actively trying to get rid of them.

> doing mass illegal deportations without due process

I think it's wrong to overreact to what Trump is doing and label things you don't like as "lacking due process" because when he does do something illegal you'll be like the boy who cried wolf.

Trump is following the law on immigration but many people think otherwise because of media misinformation. Take the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He had his due process and a judge ordered his removal in 2019. He also received "withholding of removal" from being sent home to El Salvador. The administration made a mistake in deporting him there, but they are ordered to deport him.

Many of the people you see in the news also had their day in court.

But media is also spreading misinformation on arrests. ICE doesn't need warrants to arrest people. This has always been the case. They can also arrest anyone (citizen or not) who commits an illegal act in their presence.

It's okay to not like what Trump is doing, but you should protest to change the law, not deny reality.

Also, I'm surprised you're using "illegal" instead of "undocumented".

Your skipping over a lot here. Like the fact that Garcia wasn't just "sent home" he was sent to prison. Along with 220 other men, at least 200 of which had no criminal records, and at least 50 of which entered the country legally. Against a judges orders.

Under normal circumstances I could more easily give the benefit of the doubt on this, but the reality is we are not living in any amount of normalcy as far as this administration is concerned.

Of course removing this does not change the law, but this is still an official place for people to view these documents.

Could it have just been someone making an honest mistake? Yeah of course.

Has this administration already been deleting other important information from government websites and this could have been on purpose? Also yes.

I get the feeling you're one of the people who's going to be telling me I'm overreacting while we sit shackled together on a bus to Guatemala, where surely there are lawyers waiting for us.

"You should be grateful we're getting a free vacation to a nice country with lovely weather. Do you libs ever stop complaining?" /s

"Technically this isn't illegal, because we've got an extradition treaty with Guatemala, and the court said Trump needed to show evidence in a trial before flying people out, but we're on a bus, not a plane, so really this isn't violating any laws, so it's hard to really call this executive overreach.

Also, there's no law specifically saying the court trial needs to be in an American court room, plus the ICE-built adjunct to the Guatemalan embassy is technically American territory, and the local immigration judge was officially appointed by Congress in a secret session to protect his identity, and of course you can't let media in the room for a closed session. None of this is actually illegal, so I don't know why you're being so hyperbolic."

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