With the U.S. Senate’s passage of a bill to allow the president to torture and indefinitely imprison any detainee, foreign or domestic, and suspend the writ of habeus corpus, the question must be asked how the federal government is keeping us safer by eliminating our constitutionally guaranteed rights?

Several previous administrations, both Republican and Democratic, were somehow able to thwart the more serious threat of the Soviet Union, which possessed the ability to incinerate every square inch of our country at the push of a button, without ever having to suspend the rights of American citizens. So why is it that now, when we are facing a determined, but decidedly smaller, group of enemies do we lose our constitutionally-guaranteed rights?

How does that make any of us safer?

The sad truth is that George Bush and his enablers, such as our own Sen. Susan Collins and Rep. Michael Michaud, have made our country less safe and, in the process, denigrated the Constitution which they swore to uphold.

Dave Chirayath, Auburn