Are we really upholding.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Edward Fadeley For The Register-Guard

How do we think our country is doing at the 231st year after our Declaration of Independence? On this Fourth of July, are we still true to those principles and values that help make this country a world leader?

The answers to these questions affect all of us. Surely we can help our country by returning it to reverence, or at least respect, for the Constitution. How are we doing as a country that respects our Constitution?

One candidate for president asserts that the government is "shredding the Constitution." Others say something close to that. Let's examine a few examples.

Vice President Dick Cheney claims to be part of the legislative branch of government, a status that entitles him to keep secret some of his activities as vice president. What does the Constitution say about the vice president's place in our national government?

The Constitution, ratified in 1787, provides, in Article II, ``The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States. He shall hold his office during the term of four years and, together with the vice president chosen for the same term, be elected.'' Article I very clearly provides that the U.S. Senate shall be composed of two senators from each state. Period!

In 1967, the states ratified the 25th Amendment, providing that the vice president shall succeed as president on the latter's death, resignation or removal from office, and also shall become ``acting president'' when the president declares to Congress that he is temporarily unable to serve.

There is no hint in the Constitution that the vice president is actually part of the legislative branch, as well as the executive branch. Such an assertion flies in the face of another major principle of the Constitution, namely that the government is divided into three separate branches - executive, legislative and judicial.

Another example is the argument that the courts of the judicial branch can do nothing if we imprison and perhaps torture hundreds of people for many years, so long as they are held by our government outside the United States.

Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution provides: ``The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.''

The 13th Amendment proclaims, ``Neither slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.''

Serving in the U.S. Navy in the 1950s, I visited the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, twice. There was no question of U.S. jurisdiction over that base. A quick trip to the cigar factories at Guantanamo City took us over the border into Cuba.

The right of habeas corpus has been upheld against executive power since at least the Five Knights case. The five knights were members of Parliament in the first half of the 17th century, arrested on their way home from a session by a king who did not like what they were doing or saying in Parliament. Because of that tradition, members of the Oregon Legislature cannot be arrested for their legislative acts or pronouncements on their way home from the session.

And the fact that the military is involved does not suspend the right to a court hearing to test an imprisonment without a trial or conviction. During the Civil War, civilians in Indiana proved that in the U.S. Supreme Court case of ex parte Milligan. And during the Korean conflict, a former soldier in Korea could not be abducted from his civilian life in Ohio and spirited back to Korea to face military charges there.

This country declared its independence from Britain on July 2, 1776, and its leaders adopted clear statements to explain their actions in the Declaration of Independence on July 4 of that year. Do the claims of secrecy or to arbitrary imprisonments fit with those declarations?

The world sees that American values are being stained, creating a loss of confidence in our actions, leadership and statements.

Thomas Jefferson opined, ``The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.''

George Washington said, ``Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.''

The limitations on arbitrary governmental actions in our Constitution are intended to protect that growth of liberty. But they can do so only if they are followed and enforced.

Edward Fadeley of Creswell is a former president of the Oregon Senate and a former justice of the Oregon Supreme Court.