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 ...
Five black-robed Marxist/Anarchist Thugs
have just un-constitutionally seized power
away from the American people and our
duly elected representatives.
Is he a sensationalist, or are those monumental words?
Why do the words ‘lock & load’ come to mind?
“The Nation will live to regret what the Court had done today”
No truer words...
Monumental words.
Scalia ain’t a sensationalist.
The individuals at the center of this discussion, under the internationally-recognized Laws of Land Warfare, could have legitimately been put up against a wall and executed.
Instead, they’re being awarded as-yet-undetermined privileges.
“Why do the words lock & load come to mind?”
Better hurry. At this rate the 2nd Amend won’t be around long either.
Solution: Close Gitmo. Take the prisoners and put them on barges in the middle of the Atlantic and let them float around for eternity. Or, once all are aboard, use the barges as bombing practice targets, and, of course, use live bombs.
How have we gone this far? When I was growing up in Texas you could shoot a man who was breaking and entering your house in self-defense. Today, one must prove that one had reason to believe the person was armed with a deadly weapon and had the intent to harm your person (not property)when they break and enter your house in the middle of the night. This decision now conveys the rights of citizenship, applying the right to a trial by jury, to prisoners of war. We can no longer afford to fight a war. The legal costs will be too astronomical!
If Guantanamo isn't U.S. soil, what is it? If it's Cuban, would the U.S. answer a detainee's suit in a Cuban court?
I think the Court made the right decision.
One very small thing the constitution provides for is the defense of this nation.
The Supreme Court today abdicated that responsibility and ruled for the rights of foreign American killers.
Hanging from the rafters would be too nice.
I’m shocked that we have to give constitutional rights to enemy combatants, who are not American citizens, and who were engaged in warfare against us. I’m just shocked that such a ruling could come down.
Wow. It boggles the mind. I'm sure other countries will be rushing to emulate our new ruling - NOT! But they will be running to take advantage and to call us out if we don't 'extend' those rights...
We’ll find out sometime this month; if this decision is any indication of how ‘Heller’ will go, we’re screwed.
By your easoning, our military bases in Germany, Japan, or anywhere else in the world is U.S. soil and not that of the host nation. I must and will disagree with you.
Take them all out to FortMarcy park and Shoot them with a small revolver, and lay them out neatly......The Day Before
Obama’s Inaugural address.....
easoning = reasoning
(/sarcasm)
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