Posted on 06/16/2008 10:10:08 PM PDT by Uncle Ralph
Last week's Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v. Bush has been painted as a stinging rebuke of the administration's antiterrorism policies. From the celebrations on most U.S. editorial pages, one might think that the court had stopped a dictator from trampling civil liberties. Boumediene did anything but. The 5-4 ruling is judicial imperialism of the highest order.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The battlefield meets the courtroom... no thanks to the SCotUS libs.
This guy teaches at Cal Berkeley? Wow.
BOALT is a great law school.
The worst thing about this whole series of war on terror decisions is that the US Congress excercized their powers under the US Constitution and took jurisdiction away from SCOTUS on this matter. Yet the Court ignored the law and acted anyway. In a functioning government, someone on SCOTUS would be impreached and removed.
Over the long-run, American's will get the government that the majority of her voters deserves. Unfortunately, the majority gradually chooses less and less freedom because they instead choose a freedom-restricting Nanny-State from a place of mass-personal-irresponsibility.
An interesting Book of Mormon reference to foolish, populist judges follows (Mosiah 29):
25 Therefore, choose you by the voice of this people, judges, that ye may be judged according to the laws which have been given you ...
26 Now it is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law—to do your business by the voice of the people.
27 And if the time comes that the voice of the people doth choose iniquity, then is the time that the judgments of God will come upon you; yea, then is the time he will visit you with great destruction ...
• • •
29 If your higher judges do not judge righteous judgments, ye shall cause that a small number of your lower judges should be gathered together, and they shall judge your higher judges, according to the voice of the people.
Somehow this is a flawed decision..For example, the U.S. Courts never interfered during WW II concerning the German war prisoners, saying their detention satisfied the Geneva Conventions...For logistical reasons and evidence gathering reasons, that would have been impractical, as well as determining our troops motives in shooting at the enemy, and other factors that might be considered in a criminal case..But this is Military Law, many factors are different from criminal law..
It seems that Quantanamo was not the issue as even the government acknowledged that it is not US sovereign territoty, it is in Cuba...It seems that the justices felt a keen sense that the detainees have a right to habeas corpus in the U.S. Courts...That is unprecedented...This is war..They are the enemies, and they should not be allowed to use U.S. Courts to argue their guilt or innocence. It appears that this ruling is gravely flawed...It also appears that Congress and the White House need to do more work to set up a proper framework for the military tribunals and to determine where the tribunals shall be held..
See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boumediene_v._Bush
and http://www.scotuswiki.com/index.php?title=Boumediene/Al-Odah_v._Bush
It’s simple enough to defeat this ruling. The President, in his role as Commander in Chief, orders that any person caught in a terrorist act, to include engaging US forces in combat as part of a known terrorist organization, will be shot out of hand if they attempt to surrender. Local commanders would be authorized to make exceptions if they thought that the terrorists concerned had exploitable information, and if the terrorists answered questions immediately and completely on demand.
Five someones, to be exact.
Yes -- and they want to get rid of him.
The Daily Californian (4/11/2008):
"John Yoo Has No Place Among UC Faculty"
Inside Higher Education (4/18/2008):
"A civil liberties group that is working to curb what it sees as abuses by the Bush administration has mounted an e-mail campaign to push for the firing of John Yoo, a tenured professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley."
Theres a conservative club at Cal too, they put out a great magazine.
Got a link for the magazine?—thanks.
1. “Somehow this is a flawed decision.”
Never in U.S. history has a court recognized a right to habeas corpus for enemy combatants captured abroad. For example, In WWII, German and Italian prisoners were imprisoned in the US with no habeas corpus rights. And in the case of German saboteurs captured after being put on a beach on Long Island by a German sub, they were tried in secret by a military tribunal under orders from Roosevelt, then executed (except for one who ratted out the others. He got life).
2. “It also appears that Congress and the White House need to do more work to set up a proper framework for the military tribunals and to determine where the tribunals shall be held.”
They did, and with help from Congress. In 2006 the Supreme court liberal majority decided military tribunals created by the executive to try prisoners should have congressional approval. So at Bush’s urging “The Military Commissions Act” was drafted and passed by congress. This law explicitly denies the right of terrorists captured abroad to file habeas corpus petitions. In this latest 5 to 4 ruling Justice Kennedy and company IGNORED this law that was passed by congress and signed by the president and out of thin air created a right to habeas corpus for war prisoners.
When this ‘problem’ popped up in the early going, my solution to the ‘American Taliban’(John Lindt??) was to turn him over to the Northern Alliance.....after all he probably DIDN’T fight against us, at least that was his claim, but I think organizations that he ADMITTEDLY was firing upon would have a means to handle the problem for us. If the detainees don’t like the conditions at Gitmo, let them go back to an Iraqi tribunal and face the charges of bombing civilians etc...
I am sure they will be given fair and just treatment—surely not the brutality they are facing while being detained by us (sarc)
It is all well and good that the right is bashing SCOTUS but we ought not fail to realize that the 78% of the judges were appointed by Republican Presidents.
Any chance someone could post a picture of 7 of 9?
All 4 of the judges who voted against this absurd decision were nominated by Republican Presidents. All of the judges appointed by Demonrats voted for it.
The echo chamber of our media, academe, and the Democratic Party only show how deep the rot goes. If the Manchurian Candidate wins in November, our undoing as a nation will be all but complete.
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