Posted on 12/06/2001 12:04:43 PM PST by Jim Robinson
Well, I HAVE the self-discipline, morality, and ratioinality required for self-government. Now, whether they conform to your ideals, I could care less.
You definitely stated you supported the Reno police state action and he disagreed with you---little confused are you?
Our ideals are the opposite!
The Elian Raid was Illegal
Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
When Attorney General Janet Reno asked President Clinton to approve her plan to use U.S. marshals and Immigration and Naturalization Service tactical agents to break into the home of Lazaro Gonzales to seize his great-nephew Elian, they must have known that the plan was constitutionally flawed, unlawful, and repugnant to the language and spirit of the then three-day-old decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals that ordered Reno to keep Elian in the United States.
The attorney general, herself a former chief prosecutor for Miami, knows that the government cannot break into a private home and seize a human being without a warrant specifically authorizing the seizure, unless in hot pursuit of a fleeing felon. The president-- himself a former governor, state attorney general, and constitutional law professor--must have known likewise.
The first effort to conceal the truth was the attorney general's application for a search warrant. She did not present it to Judge Michael Moore, the federal district judge in Miami handling the case, but rather waited until after 7:00 p.m. on Good Friday, when a federal duty magistrate not familiar with the case and notoriously progovernment in his rulings was available to hear warrant applications.
The affidavit presented to the magistrate to induce him to sign the search warrant was signed by Special INS Agent Mary Rodriguez. Agent Rodriguez told the magistrate that Elian was being "concealed" at Lazaro's home, was "unlawfully restrained" there, and that INS Deputy Director of Investigations James Spearman had already directed the arrest of Elian because he was "an illegal alien."
LAZARO'S HOUSE INVADED
In response, the magistrate issued a search warrant. Thus, the power that the government invoked to invade Lazaro Gonzales' house was that conferred by Congress when contraband, or evidence of a crime, is being hidden. That, of course, was hardly the case with Elian, whose daily forays into Lazaro's front yard and Little Havana's streets were regularly shown on television. Moreover, the INS itself had designated Lazaro as Elian's guardian and had placed him in Lazaro's house.
The application for the warrant is as revealing by what it does not say as by what it does. Reno justified her agents' use of tear gas, guns, and violence by claiming a fear of weapons in Lazaro's house. On this, Rodriguez's affidavit is silent. Reno claimed she seized the child for his own best interests.
There is no allegation in Rodriguez's affidavit of mistreatment or likely harm to Elian by his Miami relatives. Moreover, the affidavit does not reveal that the government never interviewed the boy or had him examined by health-care professionals. Rodriguez also did not tell the magistrate that Aaron Podhurst, a well-respected Miami lawyer and a longtime personal friend of Reno's, was feverishly mediating negotiations between lawyers for the government, Elian's father, and Lazaro as the affidavit was being filed.
The application for the warrant is also troubling because, according to Richard Sharpstein, one of Miami's best-regarded criminal defense and immigration lawyers, the INS never arrests Cuban aliens without evidence of criminal activity on the part of the alien. This restraint on the part of the INS is arguably mandated by the Cuban Adjustment Act, which Congress enacted in 1966 to encourage Cubans to flee to the United States and which confers automatic eligibility for U.S. citizenship upon all Cuban nationals in the United States for one year.
It is now clear that the "search" warrant was just a pretext to get into Lazaro's house. No legitimate federal purpose was served by the raid. Elian was not in danger, he was cared for by blood relatives, he was voluntarily in their home, and a federal appeals court was soon to hear his appeal of Judge Moore's denial of his motion to order the INS to process his asylum application. A simple court order, sought on notice to Elian's lawyers, could have peacefully transferred custody. But Reno wanted a dramatic gesture.
PHOTO SHOWN AROUND THE WORLD
The next effort we know of to conceal the truth was the KGB-like behavior of the first agent to enter the Gonzalez home after the front door had been battered down. He kicked, maced, and assaulted an NBC television cameraman, whom the attorney general's intelligence had told her would be in the house, and destroyed his opportunity to film the raid. (Three hours later at a press briefing, Reno extolled "the beauties of television." ) But neither the president nor the attorney general knew that another photographer was hiding in a bedroom.
Albert Diaz positioned himself in time to take the snapshot shown around the world: an INS agent in a private home aiming the muzzle of an automatic weapon at a six-year-old boy. This photograph is a modern-day reminder of why the framers of the Constitution insisted upon a clause--the Fourth Amendment--to protect people in their homes from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. The picture also is a slap in the face to a president and attorney general who permitted and later tried to justify the behavior it depicted.
Within hours of the abuse of Lazaro's and Elian's basic constitutional liberties, Clinton and Reno each told televised press gatherings that the agents' actions were in furtherance of the "rule of law" and the order of an appeals court. When I interviewed Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder on the Fox News Channel just a few hours after the raid, he, too, steadfastly insisted that the raid was carried out pursuant to an appeals court order and in furtherance of the "rule of law."
But the truth is that just one week before the raid, the Department of Justice had asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to order the turnover of Elian. The court declined to grant that request. Thus, we know that the president and his attorney general knew that they lacked authority for the raid without judicial sanction. Why else would they have asked for it?
The truth is that in the same decision in which the Court of Appeals denied Reno's application for the turnover of Elian it made several findings, all of which strongly militated against the violent seizure of the boy. The court found that when Elian was rescued from the sea, the INS named Lazaro, his great-uncle, as his guardian. Lazaro's interests, the court found, were identical to Elian's; they were not the interests of a foreign government.
The court further found that both Lazaro and Elian then made applications to the INS for political asylum for Elian. The court also interpreted the congressional statute governing the INS, and the INS' own regulations, as mandating that all applications for asylum be processed to completion. This, the court held, required the INS to conduct an interview of the applicant and his guardian and hold a hearing if anyone--such as a parent--objected to the asylum application. That same act of Congress and those same INS regulations, the court declared, had no limitations on the age of applicants and prohibited the INS from changing guardians for a child once an application had been filed.
AN AFFRONT TO THE FOURTH AMENDMENT
The truth is that the president's decision to conduct the early-morning raid--after the government's application for judicial authority to transfer custody of Elian away from his guardian had been denied and after the government had misled a federal magistrate into signing a search warrant--was an affront to the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, substantially obstructed the congressional mandate that all applications for asylum be processed to completion, clearly violated the INS' own regulations, and publicly thumbed its political nose at the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. The so-called rule of law cited repeatedly by the government is nothing more than Reno's subjective beliefs and her misreading of the decision of the Court of Appeals.
If one takes a step back from the guns and the anguish and tears on Holy Saturday morning, one sees this government's decision through even less credulous eyes. The Elian Gonzales case is a custody dispute. In Florida, as in all states, custody disputes are addressed by state family courts, not federal courts, and focus on one paramount issue: What are the best interests of the child--not the interests of a parent, not the interests of a president, and not the interests of a foreign government. Never in the recorded judicial history of the United States has a child's custody been changed by the force and violence of the federal government without a specific order of a court authorizing it.
In a poem about Abraham Lincoln's assassination, Herman Melville commented that Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson--the only other president to be impeached--failed to "[b]eware the people weeping when they bear the iron hand." The thousands weeping over the raid at the Gonzales home should weep for more than Elian. This president and his attorney general, after seven years, still do not perceive how they continue to weaken the fabric of our culture. In a free society the moral legitimacy of government depends in large measure on fidelity to the truth and fidelity to established law. But it is clearly too late to expect the Clinton administration to recognize this truism
I agree that is not a Constitutional, federal issue - it is a state issue. The feds should only have been involved to determine Elian's immigration status and to grant Juan a visa to come present his case before the courts. The INS had paroled Elian to his relative's care, and there are legal guidelines for reversing that process - guidelines that were violated by the Clinton Administration. The custody battle belonged in the Florida State Courts.
In the end, Clinton and Reno denied Elian and Juan their day in court - because Juan was never free to move about this country without an escort of Castro's goons, so we never knew his true desire, either. You can argue liberty versus parental rights question fairly, but it is clear that the raid was a violation of the law and the raid should be strongly condemned as a result.
Hint - it is not clear that Juan Miguel was NOT Elian's legal guardian at the time of the raid. The INS had revoked Elian's parole a couple of days before, but using a statute normally reserved for criminal matters, not civil/custody matters. And the relatives, having secured Elian's right to apply for asylum through the 11th Circuit ruling, were negotiating in good faith to turn Elian over - but the Clinton Administration was desperate to short-circuit the asylum process, hence the raid.
And why, if what the relatives were doing was so illegal, why was the only arrest warrant for Elian as an illegal alien (a ludicrous concept, since the 11th Circuit had just ordered Elian to stay in the country). The Miami relatives have NEVER been charged with a crime relating to the events around the raid - and the Clintonistas have never been shy about trying to hang charges on people - just ask the Travel Office folks about that.
And we all became a little wiser after that sad charade.
I am neither a storm trooper, nor a would-be dictator, nor a "Reno-lover". What I fail to see in your arguement is what, other than your own conviction that you are right and just, gives you the right to claim that you or an other person or agent other than Juan Miguel had the right to decide what is best for Elian. You probably dont realize it, but you are the one arguing for a police state, with you and those who think like you in the role of police.
122 posted on 12/14/01 1:34 PM Pacific by thusevertotyrants
Is this what you call..."common f'---ing sense"----denial/projection?
124 posted on 12/14/01 3:08 PM Pacific by thusevertotyrants
"Juan Miguel's demands"---Sudenland...sound very Hitlerenoesque to me---YOU!!
"and the law"---ruse of law via nazi party...gestapo/you!
Your words--thinking!
Good tyranny(yours) vs bad tyranny(mine)!
And you blame the family-victim---don't let the courts decide--FORCE/we want closure!
What kind of judge--scorekeeper--jury would you make?
Two sides to an issue a little too complicated for you?
Were you in on the fix---"decision-operations"?
Most philosophers think "free thinkers" are making it up all---explaining themselves...their lack of character---
hiding their dark side---window dressing!
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