Posted on 06/12/2008 4:16:23 PM PDT by vietvet67
"The Nation will live to regret what the Court had done today," Justice Antonin Scalia writes at the end of his dissent in Boumediene v. Bush, the case in which a bare majority of the Supreme Court, for the first time ever, extended rights under the U.S. constitution to enemy combatants who have never set foot on U.S. soil.
It's worth noting that the nation has lived to regret things the court has done in earlier wars. In Schenck v. U.S. (1919), the court upheld the conviction of a Socialist Party leader for distributing an anticonscription flier during World War I--material that would unquestionably be protected by the First Amendment under Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969). In Korematsu v. U.S. (1944), the court held that the government had the authority to ban Japanese-Americans from certain areas of California, simply on the ground that their ethnic heritage rendered their loyalty suspect. Korematsu has never been overturned, but there is no doubt that it would be in the vanishingly unlikely event that the question ever came up again.
This war was different. Almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks, we began hearing dire warnings about threats to civil liberties. Five members of the high court seem to have internalized these warnings. As Justice Anthony Kennedy put it in his majority opinion today, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times." Kennedy and his colleagues seemed determined to err on the side of an expansive interpretation of constitutional rights.
And err they did. As Justice Scalia writes:
[Today's decision] will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed. That consequence would be tolerable if necessary to preserve a time-honored legal principle vital to our constitutional Republic. But it is this Court's blatant abandonment of such a principle that...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I guess I just don’t understand the Constitution. My elementary school teachers obviously didn’t know what they were talking about and teaching us.
I would really like to understand their thinking on this. Unable to get my mind around it.
Lock and load ... indeed! FUBAR
One of the biggest understatements of recent history. Remember al Qaeda promised to use our own laws against us. The US Supreme Court just enabled them to succeed.
Two thoughts come to mind.
1. We fiddle as Rome burns.
2. The rope is already around our neck.
Seriously? I’m not anymore; I mean it. It is almost (almost!) to the point that if “it” is good for America, can you can damn well bet the farm the polar opposite is going to be the choice.
I have given your post a lot of thought : ) I think practice bombs would do. Lots and lots of practice bombs : )
That is probably how the rules of engagement will be modified ASAP. The enemy combatants will adopt the same tactic (as if they didn't do that already). No more prisoners. No more intel.
You need this as an election issue like I need a tax increase.
Agreed Lt.
These guys are not Prisoners of War.
These guys are Unlawful Combatants.
These guys are eligible for summary battlefield execution.
“Two thoughts come to mind.
1. We fiddle as Rome burns.
2. The rope is already around our neck.”
Ah, well, what the heck, I always wanted to learn to fiddle. Can one do that with a noose around their neck? These days I feel like heading for the hills! But I’m already in the hills!!! No where left to hide.
“If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”
Thomas Paine
In his dissent, Justice Roberts. when discussing detainee rights, said they need "further litigation to determine the content of their new habeas right". If the judiciary reads into the Great Writ rights such as, speedy trial, right to counsel, search and seizure, and interrogation exclusionary rules, then "The Nation will live to regret what the Court had done today," will be an understatement.
If Guantanamo isn't U.S. soil, what is it?
Legally, it is Cuban soil that is perpetually leased to the U.S. by a 1934 treaty. By the terms of that treaty, the lease provisions can be changed only if BOTH governments agreed to break the lease or if the U.S. abandoned the base property.
Every year, the U.S. sends Cuba a check for payment of the lease and, each year, Castro refused to cash it.
If it's Cuban, would the U.S. answer a detainee's suit in a Cuban court?
No. A Cuban court has no jusrisdiction in U.S. military matters conducted on land leased to the U.S. for military matters. A Cuban court can claim jurisdiction and the U.S. can tell the Cuban court to go pound sand.
UNLEASH Hell, make these bastard hear FROM US for once.
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Expect to see far fewer prisoners of war being taken by the US military as a result of this reversal of our Constitution.
The idiot liberals have just ensured that their much beloved terrorists will in future be more likely to be eliminated in the field, after short and perfunctory interrogations.
The basic mechanisms of war will not change because they will it.
This changes the nature of warfare. Prisoners of war - much less terrorist detainees (they are different) have never received this treatment.
Perhaps you will applaud this decision when a released terrorist kills you or one of your loved ones.
That statement is too severe. It could also be said that the Bush Administration has received a necessary check to its tendency to bend American law in its prosecution of the war on terror. That would be too lenient.
The truth is in the middle and emotional reactions won't help. We have to think about what we do next.
Forget about impeachment. You need control of the House of Representatives to impeach and two-thirds of the Senate to remove from office. Judges in the Federal system rightly have tenure for life. (It works both ways. Don't you think Bill Clinton would have had Scalia and Thomas removed from the bench if he could have?)
I have no problem moving the detainees in Guantanamo to the U.S. and trying them in an American Federal court. They'll be in prison longer than they think they will. I noted this in another post; the Federal court calendar is crowded, and not all Federal circuit courts are liberal. If they get the ones for Alabama and Mississippi (hint, George, land them in Biloxi), they could be there for decades. How many murderers live another ten to fifteen years past their victims?
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