Posted on 06/15/2008 12:16:25 PM PDT by Red Steel
WASHINGTON -- When the Supreme Court goes on recess at the end of this month, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy will be off to his summer teaching job in Salzburg, Austria. For the 19th year, he will teach a class called "Fundamental Rights in Europe and the United States" for the McGeorge Law School.
He tells his American and European students that the belief in individual freedom and the respect for human dignity transcends national borders. There is, he once said in an interview, "some underlying common shared aspiration" in legal systems that protects the rights and liberties of all.
That international perspective was on display Thursday as Kennedy spoke for the Supreme Court in extending legal rights to the foreign military prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "Security subsists too in fidelity to freedom's first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers," Kennedy said.
The 5-4 ruling highlighted the sharp divide over the law and the war on terrorism. The dissenters, agreeing with the Bush administration, said foreigners captured abroad in the war on terrorism had no rights in American courts.
Justice Antonin Scalia dissented with the decision "to extend the right of habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war." The ruling "warps our Constitution," he wrote in his dissent.
The majority, led by Kennedy, was more in tune with the views across Europe and of civil libertarians in this country, who have condemned the prison at Guantanamo Bay as a "legal black hole" where foreigners are shackled and held in harsh conditions without due process of law. The justices in the majority said that when U.S. authorities take someone into
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
AS someone who was heavily influenced by Ayn Rand and someone who believes the primary purpose of government is to protect citizens.
If someone is actually captured on a battlefield, and held in theater, there is no question about it.
The whole mistake was this Guantanimo thingee. It seemed so clever but was dumb. I seem to recall reading the name of the Bush appointed DOJ lawyer who argued for the whole thing. Dumb Dumb Dumb.
Do you believe that the constitution constrains the powers of the various branches of government, according to the words set forth in the constitution, or do we dispense with it when convenient? Who decides when and where we dispense with it?
No problem if they get it in a military court at Guantanamo
You must be asleep. You haven't noticed that Kalid Sheik Muhammad is trying to turn his trial into a circus?
All these pukes need to be tried in military courts
The liberal lawyers want them tried in civilian courts on US soil and turned into media circuses
2. In past wars we have allowed frequent Red Cross visitors access to POW camps AS HAVE OUR ENEMIES.
Red Cross has often been to Gitmo. So what
--And confinement has not been for 6 years without any prospect of resolution.
They would have been put through military courts and tribunals years ago. You get one guess who has been holding this all up
ANSWER: The same liberal lawyer brigade that just prevailed at the Supreme Court
I’m not as confused as you are.
If you can’t answer that question then everything else you posit here is meaningless left wing propaganda.
Ah, so you hold vigils for the second coming of John Galt. Or are you one of the Techies I used to run into who believe that Bill Gates is the second coming?
I want to know how you know that the folks who are held are enemy combatants, absent a hearing that establishes that they are enemy combatants. How do you know that they are not just some local trader who jipped some sergeant on a black market trade?
It is not confusing at all. You want to rely on the sayso of some PAO flak catcher, and me, I want an actual evidenciary hearing. I don't know why this is so hard, really.
Actually, the folks who have been holding this up is the Bush Administration who have been dragging out getting on with getting on for as long as they can. I just quoted the part where the principle foul up was the Secretary of the Navy who issued procedural orders that guaranteed that the hearings fell far short of the neutral adversarial hearings that were required under Rasul. Blame that on another good ol boy Bush appointee. Think there are none. Gates just cleaned out a couple of them. Sounds like he has more work to do.
So you want illegal combatants to have the same rights as legitimate prisoners of war? In fact, the SC decision actually gave these illegal combatants rights which exceed those granted to POWs. How many of the ten of thousands of German prisoners held in the US during WWII were granted habeas corpus?
You keep pointing out the SC reigned in the abuse of power by the Executive branch. What you fail to comprehend is that the SC trounced all over Congress as well. The Detainee Treatment Act was passed by Congress and signed by the President (because the SC said the President needed the Congress to setup the military tribunals) and expressly did not grant the detainees habeas corpus, “[N]o court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.” §1005(e)(1), 119 Stat. 2742. So the SC threw out several precedents and thumbed its nose at both Congress and the Executive branch.
Without a preconceived notion of the desired outcome, I don’t know how the SC could have ignored precedents such as Quirin (two US citizens held on US soil, tried by a military tribunal and executed) and Eisentrager.
Answer the questions in post 33.
Do we turn the entire world into an episode of CSI?
How in the world do propose we “gather evidence” in some hellhole where the high value target had to be kidnapped out of a hostile village before his plans killed thousands of Americans?
Please answer how we sanitize scenes like that or on a mountain somewhere accesable only by goats and on foot and days or weeks from civilization?
do we fly in all kinds of investigators and put them up in tents in order to gather evidence for hundreds of detainees scattered all over inccessable areas?
How many hundreds of investigators will be killed trying to gather the necessary evidence?
Or do you propose making all soldiers and Marines into investigators also?
How do secure the areas in hostile territory?
None of you can answer how you know that the detainees are being held lawfully (either as POWs or enemy combatants) and none of you can answer why you are so afraid of an habeas corpus hearing or why you think the things that the SC sets forth as minimum protections are wrongeheaded or inadequate from either the governments side or the individuals side.
I think the problem is that you just want to scream your heads off about liberals, forgetting that Republicans are merely politicians in power and not necessarily the best protectors of our constitution either.
So can you not answer what I have asked you?
Kind of eviscerates your position.
OK Mr. Habeas Corpus
Where are these hearings supposed to take place?
In Guantanamo
or
Continental USA on US soil?
Plus in what court?
A US Federal court
or
A military court?
Plus if they take place on US soil are you ready for the circus and disrespect for America that these defendants will create? Are you ready to see hundreds of TV trucks camped outside this courtroom. From TV crews from around the world?
Actually, if your read the SC decision, it sounds like it was the Secretary of the Navy who trounced all over the DTA. If you want to be ticked off at someone why not be ticked off at him for issuing implementing regulations that neutralized the whole thing.
I already told you that habeas corpus hearings are fine with me-— Done in a military tribunal at Guantanamo
I said heavily influenced, but that was thirty years ago while she was still alive and I was a teenager, and no I don't care for Gates and especially Gates senior with his support for Democrats in Washington State. Gates made lots of money but he has nothing in common with John Galt. I want a limited government and I see nothing wrong with our taking out trash like Saddam Hussein. I don't think enemy combatants captured on foreign soil have any more rights than POW's captured in war and those who hide amongst civilians have even less rights.
No, but how do you know that they are illegal combatants? Because some supply sergeant said so, or because there is an evidenciary hearing wherein the time manner and place of the individual capture are demonstrated as well as evidence of his activities which suggest that he actually was engaged in combatant activities while not in uniform, etc.
You didn’t read my first post.
I am aware of Art III Sec 2, but not of the clause in the MCA. Since you obviously read much on the subject, do you know if and how the dissenters referenced the MCA clause?
If the majority clearly ignored its lack of jurisdiction, then we have a lot more than run of the mill liberal abuse of power, we have no sh!t impeachable offenses.
If they are captured on the battlefield in uniform engaged in combat activities, then there is no problem. You just swear to the time manner and place of his capture.
As POWs there should be no presumption of release or any other right to trial or other proceeding.
PS. BUSH I established a process for adjudicating POW status in GWI. I don't know why the neo cons thought that they did not need to do it here.
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