"The administration can argue anyway they want, they can do handstands, because this case shouldn't be in the courts in the first place. And that's what Luttig should be bright enough to see."
If that's the case, then the administration should have made the case from the beginning that the case shouldn't have been in the courts in the first place. The administration didn't make that argument, so Luttig could hardly have agreed with them, could he?
And that is something that the administration should have had the balls to do, if they really believed it.
It has nothing to do with Luttig being bright or dull.
What you're basically saying is that as long as it is called "war", the executive can do anything it wants to with American citizens without having to resort to the courts. I'd love to see the administration (or you, for that matter) make *that* case. There's a reason that it hasn't.
I shudder to think of how Clinton would have used that excuse (and how she probably will, given the chance...)
Why not? Because the internees will be deemed enemy combatants. By whom? By the military alone - without any right to judicial review in a federal court or otherwise. The government's position is that its own decision as to who is an enemy combatant is binding on federal courts, and that it need not even offer the courts individualized facts to support particular detention decisions
Abdullah Muhajir (Padilla) was apprehended after spending time with Al Qaeda in Pakistan to receive orders. He was provided money and instructions to scout out the best location for a dirty bomb to be detonated. The government seized him as he stepped off the plane.
Demonstrating from the beginning its position, the government put him in a military jail at Ft Bragg. Ideally, he would have been shot as a spy, but there's no courage for those things anymore.
It was the court system that crossed into executive branch territory. The government is simply playing their silly little game.
If I am arrested for mowing my front lawn, and I go to court and argue that I'm actually a business that pays myself to cut my own lawn, and then argue that I'm a charity that cuts lawns and I cut my own lawn, then it should be apparent that the entire process and my arguments are in response to the stupidity of my being in court for something like cutting my front lawn.