"Justices open US courts to detainees; Deal setback to Bush; influx of cases expected" by Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | June 13, 2008
WASHINGTON - The US Supreme Court ruled yesterday that detainees at Guantanamo Bay have a right under the US Constitution to challenge their detention in US civilian courts, dealing perhaps the final blow to President Bush's policy of holding terrorism suspects indefinitely without charge.
The 5-to-4 court ruling is expected to immediately trigger a flood of hearings in US federal court on behalf of the approximately 260 men who have been detained for years without trial or formal charges. Legal specialists said the government must now present evidence against the men in a US court or release them - a situation the Bush administration and its allies in Congress have fought bitterly to prevent in the name of national security.
In a passionately written opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the court's majority took aim at Bush's long-held assertion that, as US commander in chief during wartime, he has broad powers to detain terrorist suspects as he sees fit in order to protect the nation.
Rejecting that theory, Kennedy wrote that the framers of the Constitution saw the need "to guard against the abuse of monarchical power" and, therefore, gave individuals the right to contest their detentions, even during "extraordinary" times.
Siding with the majority were Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, and Kennedy.
One wonders which one dies next so Bush can nominate another justice -- and divert attention from some other issue (you have seen how the MSM press becomes focused on a SC nominee to the exclusion of all else).
The dissenters were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas.
Traveling in Italy yesterday, Bush said he "will abide by the court's decision," but added, "That doesn't mean I have to agree with it."
Bush sided with the four dissenting justices, who wrote that the ruling raises "serious concerns about US national security." He said his advisers are studying the ruling "to determine whether or not additional legislation might be appropriate."
Attorney General Michael Mukasey said the ruling would not affect the Guantanamo trials against enemy combatants, the Associated Press reported. "I think it bears emphasis that the court's decision does not concern military commission trials, which will continue to proceed," Mukasey said in Tokyo today. "Instead it addresses the procedures that the Congress and the president put in place to permit enemy combatants to challenge their detention."
Translation: The decision isn't going to be obeyed!
Many legal specialists said the language of yesterday's ruling left Bush with few options and had a finality that two previous Supreme Court decisions on the issue lacked....
Some detainees say their American captors have used sleep deprivation, simulated drowning, and prolonged exposure to heat and cold to get information. Government officials have acknowledged the use of aggressive interrogation techniques but insist they were legal....
What Hitler did was legal, too, if it makes you Americans feel any better!
Yesterday's ruling also struck down a portion of the Military Commissions Act, which Congress passed in 2006. The act approved Bush's system of military commissions, but stripped all detainees of the right to appear in federal court.
So they will just imprison them on ships and sail around the world.
And YOU will NEVER KNOW about it, Court!!!
The high court's decision underscored its sharp divisions over how to handle terrorism suspects in American custody. In a dissenting opinion, Scalia argued that the Constitution should not cover foreigners held overseas.
"Today the Court warps our Constitution," he wrote. "Most tragically, it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court. . . . that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner."
Gee, those are tamer comments than what I saw below.
The two presidential candidates also showed deep divisions over the ruling. Yesterday, Senator John McCain told reporters in Boston that he is concerned that the ruling goes too far, giving foreigners the same rights as Americans. McCain... backs Bush's justice system for the detainees....
As a POW, McCain ought to be ashamed of himself!
By contrast, Senator Barack Obama heralded the ruling, saying it protects our "core values."
Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, opposed the Bush administration's tribunal system, saying that the right to challenge one's detention is fundamental to the rule of law. Obama said he would close Guantanamo Bay and try detainees in federal courts or under military courts-martial.
Another reason to vote Obama over McCain!
But for now, legal specialists say the Bush administration will almost certainly be forced to produce evidence in US courts that the detainees in custody are enemy soldiers or terrorists who committed crimes...."
Here are the further comments from Scalia:
"Reflecting how the case divided the court not only on legal but, perhaps, emotional lines, Justice Scalia said that the United States was “at war with radical Islamists,” and that the ruling “will almost certainly cause more Americans to get killed.”
Yeah, but WHAT ABOUT the LAW, asshole?
“The nation will live to regret what the court has done today,” Justice Scalia said."
So what does Scalia know that we don't, readers?
As for the "Al-CIA-Duh," etc, I'm so sick of that horse shit lie; that's why I'm not tossing up my links and commenting on them.
See:Hell-oween: Afghanistan Torture File/The First Abu Ghraib
Hell-oween: Afghanistan Torture File/Perversion
Hell-oween: Afghanistan Torture File/Dilawar and Habibullah
Hell-oween: Afghanistan Torture File/Chamber of Horrors
Hell-oween: Afghanistan Torture File/American Amnesty
Hell-oween: Afghanistan Torture File/Bagram
Afghanistan Torture Chamber
Memory Hole: Camp Nama and Task Force 6-26
Occupation Iraq: New Torture Techniques Revealed
Inside Bagram Prison
The Globe's Weekend Movie
Also see: Prop 101: Al-CIA-Duh and the OSI
Prop 101: Al-CIA-Duh's Greatest Hits
Prop 101: The "Terrorism" Business
Prop 102: Iraq and Government Lies
Al-CIA-Duh
Who Invented "Al-CIA-Duh?"
"Al-CIA-Duhs" Catch-and-Release Program
Occupation Iraq: Israeli-Trained Death Squads
Asymmetrical Warfare Group
Operation Gladio
Operation Northwoods
Occupation Iraq: British Bombers
Occupation Iraq: America's Roadside Bombs
Salvador Option
Special Police Commandos
Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group
Prop 201 tutorial
FRU
Islam's 9/11
How much more evidence do you need, readers?
More: Prop 202: 9/11 Revisited
