Posted on 09/17/2007 8:01:12 PM PDT by ventanax5
The apparently conventional ending to Jose Padilla's trial last week -- conviction on charges of conspiring to commit violence abroad and providing material assistance to a terrorist organization -- gives only the coldest of comfort to anyone concerned about how our legal system deals with the threat he and his co-conspirators represent.
Jose Padilla, in an undated driver's license photo He will be sentenced -- likely to a long if not a life-long term of imprisonment. He will appeal. By the time his appeals run out he will have engaged the attention of three federal district courts, three courts of appeal and on at least one occasion the Supreme Court of the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at benadorassociates.com ...
He is very tough on terrorism and that is the most important issue of the day.
The unlawful combatant designation affixed to Padilla certainly was not unprecedented. In June 1942, German saboteurs landed from submarines off the coasts of Florida and Long Island and were eventually apprehended. Because they were not acting as ordinary soldiers fighting in uniform and carrying arms openly, they were in violation of the laws of war and not entitled to Geneva Conventions protections.Indeed, at the direction of President Roosevelt they were not only not held as prisoners of war but were tried before a military court in Washington, D.C., convicted, and -- except for two who had cooperated -- executed, notwithstanding the contention by one of them that he was an American citizen, as is Padilla, and thus entitled to constitutional protections. The Supreme Court dismissed that contention as irrelevant.
A US born citizen who sides with the enemy in a time of war is a traitor and not due a conventional criminal trial either.
It is a crime defined in the Constititution of the United States.
In the past few months we've had 2 successful convictions of US Al Qaida agents (one living in Texas, the other California). People who left the United States after the 9-11 attacks to train with Al Qaida for jihad.
BTTT
“A US born citizen who sides with the enemy in a time of war is a traitor and not due a conventional criminal trial either.”
But how does one determine that a citizen is a traitor in the first place? Am not trying to be cute. If there is a President Hitlery in the future that distinction is going to be, and already is, quite important for those fans of the 2nd Amendment, pro life etc etc.
Times like these, Judge Roy Bean had the right solution.
Any alibi's?
You don’t lose your Constitutional protections because of charges of being a traitor. Being accused a traitor does merit one a day in court.
The way Padilla was handled was wrong. He was arrested on U.S. soil, and is a U.S. citizen, so he should have been afforded a conventional trial, as he has rights unlike the captured combatants in Gitmo.
The Germans who claimed to be American were not American by birth. One was naturalized, the other naturalized with his father, having been brought here as a child.
This is why the Constitution should not be ignored for any reason. If it gets in the way of battling terrorism, that’s just one of the “hardships” of being a supposedly free country. So many say that it’s for the good fight, but what happens when Presidents other than Republicans get to designate enemy combatants of the United States, say in the War on Poverty?
This system cannot survive in its present form, after the first nuke gets slipped in by the mohammedans and we don't know who to retaliate against you will see what I am talking about.
Yeah, I agree and it’s unfortunate. If the nuke ever happens, it’s going to be ugly.
An excellent article that shows he “gets it” — contrast with so many dim-witted liberal and RINO pols who care mainly what will bring them praise in the NY Times.
p.s. He does lapse badly in one respect: I am sick and tired of the pandering phrase “world’s greatest deliberative body” applied to the US Senate — even if there may not be too many other strong contenders for the title, no political body dominated by such charlatans as Harry Reid, Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, Arlen SPECTRE, and Patrick Leahy, et al can possibly be regarded as a COMPETENT deliberative body, never mind the “greatest” (or if the title does fit then that just shows how dismal the situation is throughout the world!!).
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