Posted on 05/11/2006 8:59:45 AM PDT by mathprof
After Fight in Terrorism Case, Conservative Star Gives Up Court Seat for Boeing Job.
On Nov. 22, U.S. Circuit Judge J. Michael Luttig was at work in his chambers here when he received a telephone call telling him to switch on the television. There, he saw Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announce that the government would file charges against Jose Padilla in a federal court -- treating the accused terrorist like a normal criminal suspect.
The judge was stunned. Two months earlier, he had written a landmark opinion saying the government could hold Mr. Padilla without charge in a military brig. (Read the opinion.1) The decision validated President Bush's claim that he could set aside Mr. Padilla's constitutional rights in the name of national security. The judge assumed the government had a compelling reason to consider the suspect an extraordinary threat. Now Mr. Gonzales wanted the courts to forget the whole case.
It didn't take long for the judge's anger to burst out into the open. The next month he wrote that moves such as the attorney general's cast doubt on the Bush administration's "credibility before the courts." Judge Luttig tried to block Mr. Padilla's transfer to civilian custody from the brig. (Read the opinion.2) The administration's top litigator fired back that the judge "defies both law and logic."
The clash, which underscores the increasing skepticism among even some conservative jurists toward the Bush administration's sweeping theories of executive power, culminated yesterday in Judge Luttig's resignation. The 51-year-old judge, once considered a likely Bush nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, stepped down from his lifetime seat on the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to start a new career in Chicago as general counsel for Boeing Co.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
There is no reason for me to declare "my party right or wrong" since there is insufficient "wrong" exhibited to make such a declaration. My party because the only alternative to it at this point in time is varying degrees of insanity.
Prosecution of the War on Terror is the greatest object this nation has before it. Recognition of this reality is the chief qualification for speaking coherently wrt politics and world affairs. Denial of it indicates that one joins the Party of Treason's attempts to sabotage the President.
Bush has never varied from his conservative principles and the chief evidence for that which is inescapable to the sentient is the malignant hatred of his enemies who stoop to no low to destroy him even if it means destroying this nation. Those are the allies of the Bush Whacker.
Take a deep breath. You have met the enemy and it is yourself.
Not at all. I am a patriot concerned with the defense of this nation and refuse to allow the deluded to speak for me using demogogic bullshit as an argument.
I do not think anyone would want to speak for you. You sound too much like a liberal mole.
Get your hearing checked.
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