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SNIPPET: "Some comments • I have to assume that al-Balawi was thoroughly debriefed by al-Qaida before being sent on this mission, and I'm surprised no one has sought to correlate his "infiltration" of al-Qaida with Abu Yahya al-Libi's book released over the summer: "Guidance on the Ruling of the Muslim Spy" • See also: Al Qaida: Western Spies Multiply "Like Locusts"."

April 03, 2009, 2:00 p.m. Imperial Judiciary Goes GlobalBy the Editors In 2004, the Supreme Court sowed the seeds for a national-security upheaval when it ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that war prisoners held outside the United States had a right to challenge their detentions in federal court. Last year, in Boumediene v. Bush, the justices continued the seismic shift, holding that the right they had invented in Rasul — a right extended to aliens whose only connection to the United States is in waging war against it — was somehow rooted in our Constitution. Thursday, the inevitable earthquake...

WHEN IT HEARS ARGUMENTS IN Hamdan v. Rumsfeld this Tuesday, the Supreme Court will consider whether the Bush administration can try Guantanamo detainees in special military tribunals, or whether the detainees' cases have to be heard in federal court. In the run-up to the hearing, liberal proponents of federal judicial involvement declared their own war--on Justice Scalia's right to participate in the legal debate.It began with a Newsweek report about a speech Scalia delivered on March 8 at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland. (Unfortunately, no transcript of his remarks has been published.) There, Justice Scalia allegedly told attendees that...

The Supreme Court ruled in Rasul v. Bush that federal courts will conduct habeas corpus review of alien enemy combatants' detentions outside the United States to ensure the detainee is really an enemy combatant. In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the justices held that U.S. citizens detained in the war have the right to a lawyer and a fair hearing before a neutral judge. The court's rulings -- quite rational, legally defensible, and moderate at the philosophical level -- are a disaster at the practical level. Well-respected conservative commentators stress these decisions are not a body blow to the Bush administration's war...

  A Majority for Tax EvasionJuly 8, 2004  With country club indifference, the Supreme Court has protected the “rights” of terrorists...and left you, the taxpayer, holding the bill.  To be fair, Justices Scalia, Rehnquist and Thomas can still be counted as real Americans. From the Rasul vs. Bush decision of June 28th, six of the court's benchwarmers evaded the issue of barbarians murdering Americans and decided, “The question now before us is whether the habeas statute confers a right to judicial review of the legality of Executive detention of aliens in a territory over which the United States exercises plenary and exclusive...

The same slippery slope one assigns to the Supreme Court in Rasul v. Bush an outrageous ruling explained well by Andy McCarthy and others is no less likely in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. The fundamental issue here is judicial review in the context of war, and the proper extent of that judicial review. I'm not much impressed with the alignment of the justices in some of the arguments I've been hearing. Conservatives, including originalists like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, can't be expected to agree all the time. And they don't. So, the mere fact that they disagree in Hamdi is...

... The Court's three rulings will surely complicate U.S. detention policy, at least at the margins. But at the same time they uphold the longstanding and proper deference that the Supreme Court has shown throughout its history to the executive branch on national security, especially in wartime. That includes decisions on how to define and handle a dangerous enemy. For a change, this particular Court actually restrained itself. Most important, the Court upheld the authority of the Commander-in-Chief to detain enemy combatants, including U.S. citizens. That's the key finding of Hamdi, and the implicit basis of Padilla, which the Court...

British lawyers accuse US defence secretary of 'horsetrading with human beings' Lawyers acting for British detainees at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba yesterday stepped up pressure for their release and attacked Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, for saying that they could be repatriated only on condition that they were prosecuted here. Gareth Peirce, who is acting for the families of Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, both from Tipton in the West Midlands, accused Mr Rumsfeld of "horsetrading with human beings". She said the prisoners were being unlawfully detained and there was growing evidence that they ...

More than 250 suspects are being held in Cuba A sixth Briton is being held by the US at Camp X-Ray, the Foreign Office has confirmed. Martin Mubanga was arrested in Zambia and then transferred to the maximum security base at Guantanamo Base in Cuba. The 29-year-old, who has dual British-Zambian nationality, is believed to be from north London. Briton Feroz Abbasi is also being held Mr Mubanga was understood to have had fled to Zambia after fighting in Afghanistan alongside al-Qaeda and the Taleban, according to The Sunday Times. It is thought Mr Mubanga was held by the Zambian...