Free Republic

In case you missed it, the Supreme Court Thursday bestowed Constitutional rights to terrorists currently held at Guantanamo Bay. The broadcast evening news programs predictably saw this as a stinging defeat for the Bush administration. Conservative radio talk show host and constitutional lawyer Mark Levin stated that reporters making such statements "are lying through their teeth. They are propagandists, spewing the talking points of the enemy." Levin took the Supreme Court to task for this ruling as well as the predictable standing ovation from the MSM. He said denying foreign enemy combatants access to U.S. courts is an incident of...

The White House and allies in Congress have begun exploring how to limit the scope of this week's Supreme Court ruling that says suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay have the right to challenge their detentions in federal court. Administration lawyers were digesting the ramifications of a decision they condemned as an unjustified judicial usurpation of federal and congressional prerogatives in waging war. They said the court provided little guidance for the standards judges should use in evaluating the claims of detainees seeking release, and suggested that they might press Congress to spell out new rules. "We're looking at all...

Thursday's 5-4 decision awarding "unlawful combatants" at Gitmo --terrorists-- the "privilege of the writ of habeas corpus" has left millions of Americans stunned. What in the world is the majority of the Supreme Court thinking? Justice Scalia, writing in dissent, was blunt: America is at war with radical Islamists. The enemy began by killing Americans and American allies abroad: 241 at the Marine barracks in Lebanon, 19 at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, 224 at our embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, and 17 on the USS Cole in Yemen. See National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United...

Respondents, who are nonresident enemy aliens, were captured in China by the United States Army and tried and convicted in China by an American military commission for violations of the laws of war committed in China prior to their capture. They were transported to the American-occupied part of Germany and imprisoned there in the custody of the Army. At no time were they within the territorial jurisdiction of any American civil court. Claiming that their trial, conviction and imprisonment violated Articles I and III, the Fifth Amendment, and other provisions of our Constitution, laws of the United States and provisions...

Boumediene—Chief Justice Roberts's Dissent [Ed Whelan] I’m not going to undertake to summarize the 126 or so pages of opinions in Boumediene v. Bush. On the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr offers selected excerpts from Justice Kennedy’s 70-page majority opinion. I’ll do the same here for Chief Justice Roberts’s dissent and in a later post for Justice Scalia’s. Various excerpts (citations omitted) from the Chief Justice’s dissent (joined by Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito): Today the Court strikes down as inadequate the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants. The political branches...

President Bush on Thursday strongly disagreed with a Supreme Court ruling that clears foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. Bush suggested new legislation may now be needed to keep the American people safe. "We'll abide by the court's decision," Bush said during a news conference in Rome. "That doesn't mean I have to agree with it." The court's decision was sure to be popular in Europe, where many leaders have called for the closing of of Guantanamo. In its third rebuke of the Bush administration's treatment of prisoners, the court ruled 5-4...

WASHINGTON: The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have rights under the U.S. Constitution to challenge their detention in civilian courts. The justices handed the Bush administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The vote was 5 to 4, with the court's liberal justices in the majority. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."...