ANSWER: Military Commissions Act

The full text of this act is on the Library of Congress "Thomas" site, along with 13 earlier stages of it including House Bill 6166 and Senate Bill 3930. Type "military commissions act" in the "Search Bill Text" box at the center of the page. It lists the 14 hits with the exact phrase at the top of the results page, then 128 other bills that contain all 3 words but not near each other, and finally 858 bills with at least one of the words.

The latest form of the bill seems to be record no. 3, "Military Commissions Act of 2006 (Enrolled as Agreed to or Passed by Both House and Senate)[S.3930.ENR]" Clicking on this title will bring up a hot-linked table of contents page, to get you to separate sections of the 38 page text of this act. You can also click on the "GPO's PDF Display" link at upper left, to get a clean printable copy.

Web news services may be pretty overwhelming on this; "military commissions act: gets 1770 hits in Google News. Even the more specific: "military commissions act" "habeas corpus" gets 766. The search: "military commissions act" and "separation of powers" gets only 52 hits in Google News. You might find useful and different perspectives in Google's Directory under Society/Issues; possibly in the categories: Human Rights and Liberties, or even under Terrorism or Warfare and Conflict.

There are some full text magazine articles in Ebsco's Masterfile (available remotely via library card number login at many public libraries). I get 3 full text out of 8 total hits for the search: military commissions act, limiting to the default title, subjects, abstracts. Academic Search Premier, a more scholarly index, is available at most academic libraries. It gets similar results in the default search (title, abstract, subjects) - 7 hits, 2 full text. If you use the drop-down menu to change the search to TX-All Text, you get 21 hits, 16 of them full text online. Masterfile gets 25 hits (20 of them full text on line) if you search TX-All Text.

If you are near a large school such as Rutgers, by all means try Lexis Academic or Factiva, to get newspaper articles and commentary. These are usually available on campus, even to non-students. Lexis Congressional lets you search for congressional hearings. The search: military commissions act gets 4 hits in the past 2 years (default search), including hearings by Armed Services, Judiciary, and Rules Committees. The more general search: military commissions gets 24 hits in the past 5 years. This would get you some background of earlier Congressional debates on the issue of these military commissions.

Lexis Academic (probably available at more places than is Lexis Congressional) will get many news articles, 28 in "General News/Major Papers" for past 6 months. You can limit to certain newspapers if you wish. You can also search magazines and journals, under the General News category in "Guided News Search". But as of Oct 28, 2006, I had to search "full text" in Lexis "Legal Research"/"Legal News" to get 2 hits for "military commissions act". Even the "Law Reviews" search gets one hit in title/headline for: military commissions act. It is a 47 page review with over 250 cited references: Villanova Law Review 2006 51 Vill. L. Rev. 737 LENGTH: 16865 words Comment: THE MILITARY COMMISSION IN THE WAR ON TERRORISM NAME: Haridimos V. Thravalos. (Copyright (c) 2006 Villanova University)

As in Ebsco's databases, Lexis / Legal News gets many more hits for the search: military commissions. In past 5 years, it gets 24 hits, searching title, lead paragraph, and terms. Full text for 5 years gets 93 hits. Lexis / Legal Research / Law Reviews get 84 hits for the search: military commissions.