Posted on 06/18/2008 7:41:45 AM PDT by K-oneTexas
Battlefield 'Habeas Corpus'
Janet M. LaRue
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Here’s my advice to our troops in harm’s way based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s reprehensible ruling June 12, which forces the military to treat enemy fighters captured in combat as if they were caught insider trading on Wall Street.
In Boumedine v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States, a 5-4 Court majority declared that illegal enemy jihadists you captured outside America, now being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have a constitutional right to challenge their confinement in civilian courts inside America.
The decision is based on a legal principle called habeas corpus, which means “you have the body.” Here’s my battlefield version: “Don’t doubt—take them out!” Give ’em a box instead of a brief.”
Thanks to five “unelected politically unaccountable judges,” as Chief Justice Roberts put it, you can no longer afford to spare their lives unless you want to:
Maybe you could tie a yellow ribbon ‘round a different box, and Fed-ex your captured enemies to the five judges who’ve made your job a whole lot tougher, longer and more dangerous: Anthony Kennedy, John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
They don’t like us caging these animals in Gitmo, which is a whole lot homier than the hell holes they came from. So tuck in a note urging the five to take them home for care and feeding. These judges probably don’t have any guns in the house, but do remind them to dispose of knives, avoid sleeping, and hire a food taster.
Let me put in non-legalese what the Court majority did: They made it up.
They’re using their “living and breathing” Constitution to squeeze the life out of your ability to win this war. The “liberty and security” they profess to protect will be buried with us and the Constitution. Here’s their rationale, not to be confused with rational:
The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law.
After admitting there’s no case in the history of our Constitution or the English Common Law that supports giving habeas rights to aliens on foreign soil, the five invented an undefined “functional” test for deciding whether constitutional rights should be given extraterritorial application.
They pretend they didn’t overrule their 58-year precedent in Johnson v. Eisentrager, which held that habeas jurisdiction didn’t extend to Germans being held in an American military prison located in post-war Germany. They pulled a “Constitutional bait and switch” on the President and the Congress, as the dissent called it, they didn’t want more criticism for throwing precedent to the dogs along with the Constitution.
The laws at issue in Boumedine and Al Odah were enacted after the President and Congress worked diligently to correct problems with prior law, which the Court had faulted in two prior cases. After refusing last year to hear the same appeal by the same detainees challenging the new law, the Court has now declared it unconstitutional on its face, even though the detainees never took advantage of the rights provided. Chief Justice John Roberts condemned that in his fervent dissent:
Remarkably, this Court does not require petitioners to exhaust their remedies under the statute; it does not wait to see whether those remedies will prove sufficient to protect petitioners’ rights.
This statutory scheme provides the combatants held at Guantanamo greater procedural protections than had ever been afforded alleged enemy detainees—whether citizens or aliens—in our national history.
Justice Antonin Scalia was scathing in his dissent:
At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantanamo Bay have returned to the battlefield. … It was reported only last week that a released detainee carried out a suicide bombing against Iraqi soldiers in Mosul, Iraq.
During the 1995 prosecution of Omar Abdel Rahman, federal prosecutors gave the names of 200 unindicted co-conspirators to the “Blind Sheik’s” defense lawyers; that information was in the hands of Osama Bin Laden within two weeks.
The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today.
Only God and you can save us from the consequences of this dishonorable Court ruling. If you decide to start executing justice on the battlefield, you won’t get any grief from the millions of us who support you.
I read the Eisenstrager decision. The words “declared war” appear in it. This decision could open the door to POW’s from the Korean and Vietnam wars to sue for reparations.
Amen to that! The SCOTUS may have unwittingly contributed to a higher ‘kill’ rate on the field, but that’s their problem, isn’t it?
I have no problem with it — at all.
That’s my solution. Shoot them on the spot and they won’t make any more trouble. And you won’t have to feed and coddle them for $100,000 a year at taxpayer expense, or pay the fees of their Public Defenders.
BUT. Remember Haditha, and Murtha, and the Navy Adjutant General’s Office. What do you do when you have enemy agents working as stringers for the news services, and traitors working as lawyers in the military, who will accuse you of murder every time you kill an enemy?
Capture a terrorist in the act, and some liberal judge will let him loose to kill again. Shoot him, and you’ll be court martialed for killing a poor, innocent civilian, as testified by an Islamist AP reporter and several Muslim witnesses, and as ordered by a commander who has been threatened by Murtha with loss of all his funding from the Armed Services Committee.
Imagine how this will play out if Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are running the show.
Amazingly, the US soldiers and marines have less right to appear in civilian court than the jihadis.
If, upon review of their case, it is determined that they were illegal combatants that are not covered by the Geneva Conventions, do they go back to Gitmo indefinitely? What happens after this review if the court says that they are not to be freed? Has anything changed in that regard?
That doesn't surprise me at all.
Maybe John McCain needs to include the Supreme Court Five along with Barry Obama in his next tour of Iraq.
Imagine how this will play out if Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are running the show.
:::::::
There would have already been a Constituion-burning party, and the SCOTUS would be relegated to fund raising from our enemies for the DemoRat party....
Apparently the Supreme Court and the Democratic Party now believe that the 101st Airborne should have been been giving Miranda warnings to the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler division at Bastogne.
America should note how few “unelected unaccountable activists” have control over about 300 MILLION people’s lives. Here is a classic example of how they can REWRITE our Constitution to suit their radical anti-American agenda.
Yes, the taxpayers are out lots of money for lawyers and the courts spend time delaying justice for cases they should be hearing.
No good deed goes unpunished. Under the Geneva Conventions, combattants who do not follow the rules of war as set forth in those conventions (including carrying arms openly, wearing identifable uniforms or insignia) can be subjected to summary justice on the battlefield as spies or saboteurs. We decide to let them live and house them in a relatively cushy prison, and we get nothing but grief for it.
Simply stated: Take no prisoners. (See my tagline)
The problem is that you need to take prisoners to get the Intel. Kill everybody & you learn nothing. The Supremes have made it difficult because a civilian trial will require the Pentagon to bring classified material into the courtroom. I suspect that the prosecution will just release most of these detainees rather than reveal what they have on them in open court.
OTOH, we will be treated to circus trials for the baddest-of-the-bad. (And some may go free.) Either way, America loses.
The Decision is the surreal inversion of “The Trial” by Kafka.
The collective perpetuate themselves and the collective for terror into future generations unaborted.
Impeach Them!
we get nothing but grief for it
Amen.
Congratulations, SCOTUS. In particular: Anthony Kennedy, John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. You’ve just opened up the floodgates for Islamic scumbag terrorists to manipulate the U.S. court system to their advantage. Somewhere, Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, and Julius Streicher are wondering why they didn’t get the same break.
Click the link to go and sign this petition.
[link to www.petitiononline.com]
If you wish to be contacted, please make your email address available to the author.
To: U. S. CongressPETITION FOR REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES
We the People of the United States, do hereby demand that our duly elected representatives in both houses of Congress, initiate impeachment proceedings against the following Supreme Court Justices:
John Paul Stevens
Anthony Kennedy
David H. Souter
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Stephen G. Breyer
We, the undersigned, consider the Supreme Court ruling in Kelo v. New London, 04-108, rendered June 23, 2005, not only unacceptable, but to be in criminal violation of the Justice's oaths to uphold, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Be advised that We the People regard elected officials to be our public servants. Failure to take action against the Justices specified shall be considered support for the decision rendered in the aforementioned case, and will result in our resolve to ensure your defeat in the next election.
Being from myriad political and ideological spectra, we are united in our belief that our right to own property is inalienable.Sincerely,
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