'Lawfare' loses big

The Wall Street Journal ^ | 01/28/2012 | The Wall Street Journal

[Martin_Schmidt]

The guerrilla legal campaign against national security suffered a big defeat this week, and the good news deserves more attention. The victory for legal sanity came Monday when the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision to toss out a suit brought by aspiring terrorist Jose Padilla against a slew of Bush Administration officials.

Readers may remember that Padilla was arrested in 2002 for plotting to set off a dirty bomb on U.S. soil. He was detained as an enemy combatant, convicted in a Miami court and sentenced to 17 years in prison. But Padilla has been adopted as a legal mascot by the ACLU and the National Litigation Project at Yale Law School, which have sued far and wide alleging mistreatment and lack of due process.

[Martin_Schmidt]

Full length article available here: http://davidrivkin.tumblr.com/post/16765626989/lawfare-loses-big

[Sam Gamgee]

The left really are carpetbaggers for our enemies.

[Grut]

The thing is, Padilla can be guilty of terrorism and the government can still be guilty of having violated his rights. Holding a US civilian in a military brig for more than three years, and not bringing him to trial in a timely manner, is just inexcusable. Now that it's happened to him, it can happen to any of us.

[B Knotts]

Very true. And, if I’m remembering correctly, he was arrested on U.S. soil. It would be different, in my opinion, if he had been captured in the “war zone,” which is difficult to define in this case. But, at the very least, if he was captured abroad, it would be not quite as clear-cut.

[USNBandit]

I agree. Even if they had caught him in Afghanistan, I think I would prefer to have him tried in federal court, and in a timely manner. Three years in the Charleston Brig was a big mistake.