Posted on 01/02/2009 8:15:05 PM PST by smokingfrog
Just a month after President-elect Barack Obama takes office, he must tell the Supreme Court where he stands on one of the most aggressive legal claims made by the Bush administration — that the president may order the military to seize legal residents of the United States and hold them indefinitely without charging them with a crime.
The new administration’s brief, which is due Feb. 20, has the potential to hearten or infuriate Mr. Obama’s supporters, many of whom are looking to him for stark disavowals of the Bush administration’s legal positions on the detention and interrogation of so-called enemy combatants held at Navy facilities on the American mainland or at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
During the campaign, Mr. Obama made broad statements criticizing the Bush administration’s assertions of executive power. But now he must address a specific case, that of Ali al-Marri, a Qatari student who was arrested in Peoria, Ill., in December 2001. The Bush administration says Mr. Marri is a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda, and it is holding him without charges at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. He is the only person currently held as an enemy combatant on the mainland, but the legal principles established in his case are likely to affect the roughly 250 prisoners at Guantánamo.
Many legal experts say that all of the new administration’s options in Mr. Marri’s case are perilous. Intelligence officials say he is exceptionally dangerous, making deportation problematic.
Trying him on criminal charges could be difficult, too, in part because some of the evidence against him may have been obtained through torture and would not be admissible.
And staying the course in the Marri case would outrage civil libertarians.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
L
Oh, yeah, and put panties on the heads of the pukes who wanted to turn this guy loose.
I expect a lot of legalese spouted by the community-organizer-in-chief to confuse the sheeple. The end result will be in the favor of the terrorists.
This why I don’t worry about the Fairness Doctrine. If Obama wants to get rid of Rush, et al, all he has to do is name them enemy combatants and that hold them indefinitely without charging them with a crime.
I can see Dear Leader rubbing his hands together in anticipation.....to put our service men and women on trial for war crimes. He and that slimmy Pelosi and the rest.
Is this a true statement of the issue?
I am wondering the same thing.
I am wondering the same thing.
Is this a true statement of the issue?
This came from the NYT so I am sure that there is much more to this than stated in the article.
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