THE AUDACITY OF TRUTH ABOUT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
Posted on 06/13/2008 5:03:45 AM PDT by SE Mom
...The practical effect of the decision is that approximately 200 detainees at Guantanamo (70 of the remaining 270 have already been approved for transfer or release) will be able to file a lawsuit in federal district court and force the government to prove that they are unlawful enemy combatants. The government will have to decide whether it wants to prove that each detainee is an unlawful enemy combatant in federal district court, and if so, will have to pull together the evidence quickly to prepare for the habeas/administrative hearings in court.
The decision also calls into question whether the military commissions will continue as planned. Under the Military Commissions Act, the court only has jurisdiction over detainees properly deemed to be “unlawful enemy combatants.” Each of the 200 detainees remaining at Gitmo went through a CSRT, and each was determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant. Armed with this new decision, lawyers for the commissions’ defendants will rightfully argue that the military commissions does not have jurisdiction over their clients because those clients were determined to be unlawful enemy combatants by the now discredited CSRT’s.
...
Although it is too early to tell, other unintended consequences of this decision might include detainees petitioning the government for asylum once ordered released by a federal judge (because no country wants them), and/or suing the United States for millions of dollars for “unlawful imprisonment.”
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
Kent Scheidegger, Legal Director, Criminal Justice Legal Foundation
“The Supreme Court simply ignored the historical evidence that shows the constitutional right to habeas corpus does not extend to aliens held as military
prisoners. The result is an unfortunate judicial interference with a decision that properly belongs to the executive and legislative branches of government.”
Headline?
Observers to be assigned to combat units.
Pentagon to draft thousands of lawyers
ACLU demands Court reconsider decision
We need to put a detention facility in the lobby of the Supreme Court and put some of these terrorist on a work release program with in-Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter, John Paul Stevens and Justice Kennedy
What boggles my mind is how the liberals on this court would say that us citizens have no individual right to own a firearm, but terrorists who aren’t citizens HAVE a constitutional right to access our courts!
This is so unbelievable I can’t wrap my brain around it:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_06_08-2008_06_14.shtml#1213280702
The Court then goes on to talk a lot about the history of habeas, and then distinguishes Eisentrager very much along the lines of Justice Kennedy’s concurrence in Rasul v. Bush. The Court then concludes that the detainees have a constitutional right to habeas:
It is true that before today the Court has never held that noncitizens detained by our Government in territory over which another country maintains de jure sovereignty have any rights under our Constitution. But the cases before us lack any precise historical parallel. They involve individuals detained by executive order for the duration of a conflict that, if measured from September 11, 2001, to the present, is already among the longest wars in American history. See Oxford Companion to American Military History 849 (1999). The detainees, moreover, are held in a territory that, while technically not part of the United States, is under the complete and total control of our Government. Under these circumstances the lack of a precedent on point is no barrier to our holding.
We hold that Art. I, §9, cl. 2, of the Constitution has full effect at Guantanamo Bay. If the privilege of habeas corpus is to be denied to the detainees now before us, Congress must act in accordance with the requirements of the Suspension Clause. . . . The MCA does not purport to be a formal suspension of the writ; and the Government, in its submissions to us, has not argued that it is. Petitioners, therefore, are entitled to the privilege of habeas corpus to challenge the legality of their detention.
-Justice Kennedy-
Exactly- and if this is the frame of mind they’re in now- God help us all when the Heller ruling comes out soon..
Anyone else coming?
Yeah... I didn't think so...
This will have the ACLU drooling with joy as the taxpayers will take it in the shorts again. Were those 5 that stupid.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/samgrahamfelsen/gG5Gz5
Today’s Supreme Court decision ensures that we can protect our nation and bring terrorists to justice, while also protecting our core values. The Court’s decision is a rejection of the Bush Administration’s attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo - yet another failed policy supported by John McCain. This is an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus. Our courts have employed habeas corpus with rigor and fairness for more than two centuries, and we must continue to do so as we defend the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy. We cannot afford to lose any more valuable time in the fight against terrorism to a dangerously flawed legal approach. I voted against the Military Commissions Act because its sloppiness would inevitably lead to the Court, once again, rejecting the Administration’s extreme legal position. The fact is, this Administration’s position is not tough on terrorism, and it undermines the very values that we are fighting to defend. Bringing these detainees to justice is too important for us to rely on a flawed system that has failed to convict anyone of a terrorist act since the 9-11 attacks, and compromised our core values.
- Barack Obama, 12 June 2008
But what is the meaning of the term "our Government"?
The United States of America is, among other things, a political community. It has rules for membership, and it has a national territory.
It has a very unusual sovereign: We the People of the United States.
We have seen fit to exercise Our sovereignty through a system of divided powers, with some (but not all) of Our powers delegated to executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Powers not delegated are retained per Amendment X.
The Supreme Court in this exercise in foolishness speaks of Our government (notice in their opinion they capitalize "government") as if we were a unitary state deriving its powers and obligations in succession to an hereditary monarch. They then go on to act as if they are the wise guardians of that unitary state, acting to prevent a relapse into absolutism.
But this is all wrong. the prisoners at Gitmo are detained pursuant to the War Power of the People of the United States, exercised in this case through our agent George W. Bush. Our power over them is absolute, it does not derive from either the Legislative or the Judical power we have delegated to the Congress or the Supreme Court, respectively.
If I were President, I'd start hanging the detainees tomorrow. If Lincoln could disrupt the Maryland legislature with the army, I could certainly get away with THAT.
Thank you, you just made my day.
People have confused FR (and blogosphere) with an aggregating and liberating voice for "the People."
It is not.
It is a dividing honey pot which allows us to individually exhaust our anger on QWERTY, diminished so that we WILL NOT 'gather in the streets.'
I'm not saying it's a conspiratorial palliative invented like the boob-tube to dumb us down.
But we are where we are now because of how comfortable we are.
FR IS GENERALLY A COLLECTION OF PSEUDONYMS! If the President or the Judicial Oligarchy or the terrorists turned off the internet tomorrow, FR and the 'collected citizens' who called to reject Amnesty would dis-appear in milliseconds. Ugh.
Ironically, you illustrate my point in #18. 2111USMC taps out a quippy indignation, and he, and you, are momentarily satisfied. The motivation to actually do something inadvertantly having being mollified by JR's invention.
Clearly those 5 justices hate the American people (and know that they probably all live in elite gated communities where they feel safe, the rest of us be damned).
susie
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