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GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - Plans to close Guantanamo are not sitting well with the Sept. 11 victims' relatives who sat stunned while two alleged terrorists declared they were proud of their role in the plot.

May 15, 2009 Note: The following text is a quote: United States Transfers Lakhdar Boumediene to France Lakhdar Boumediene, an Algerian national who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility since 2002, has been transferred to France. As directed by the President’s Jan. 22, 2009, Executive Order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of Boumediene’s case. As a result of that review, Boumediene was approved for transfer to France, which was carried out today pursuant to an arrangement between the United States and France. Boumediene was involved in the Supreme Court case, Boumediene v....

SNIPPET: “WASHINGTON: The family of an Algerian national held at the US prison camp in Guantanamo for seven years is delighted he is due to arrive in France next week to start a new life. Lakhdar Boumediene, 42, would be the first non-French citizen from Guantanamo to be taken in by France since President Barack Obama pledged to shut down the prison camp when he took office in January. “I cannot hide the fact I am really happy. Soon, he is going to be freed,” his wife Abassia Bouadjimi told AFP Wednesday from Algeria. “He really is keen to be...

Helen Thomas: Why is the president blocking habeas corpus from prisoners at Bagram? I thought he taught constitutional law. And these prisoners have been there... Robert Gibbs: You're incorrect that he taught on constitutional law. You know we live in interesting times when Helen Thomas is going after Barack Obama. Miss Thomas was asking the White House press secretary last week why detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan should not have the same right to challenge their detention in federal court that last year's Supreme Court ruling in Boumediene v. Bush gave to Guantanamo's detainees. All Mr. Gibbs could...

April 03, 2009, 2:00 p.m. Imperial Judiciary Goes GlobalBy the Editors In 2004, the Supreme Court sowed the seeds for a national-security upheaval when it ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that war prisoners held outside the United States had a right to challenge their detentions in federal court. Last year, in Boumediene v. Bush, the justices continued the seismic shift, holding that the right they had invented in Rasul — a right extended to aliens whose only connection to the United States is in waging war against it — was somehow rooted in our Constitution. Thursday, the inevitable earthquake...

Department of Justice Withdraws “Enemy Combatant” Definition for Guantanamo Detainees In a filing today with the federal District Court for the District of Columbia, the Department of Justice submitted a new standard for the government’s authority to hold detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility. The definition does not rely on the President’s authority as Commander-in-Chief independent of Congress’s specific authorization. It draws on the international laws of war to inform the statutory authority conferred by Congress. It provides that individuals who supported al Qaeda or the Taliban are detainable only if the support was substantial. And it does not...

The war is over. Our peerless armed forces took Tora Bora and, when we finally let them, Fallujah. But al-Qaeda won in Washington, and that has made all the difference. The War on Terror has radically altered the compact between the American people and their government by dramatically changing the nature of the U.S. courts. Until this new, unaccountable monster is caged, it will continue to devour our political community’s capacity to wage war and to defend itself. And that caging had better happen soon, because the word “war” in this context refers only to our nation’s forcible military response...

Last Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dealt a crushing blow to national defense. The three-judge panel’s ruling in al Odah v. United States has gotten scarce media attention. Perhaps that’s understandable: It’s a mind-numbing technical dispute over “discovery” in litigation, vying for attention against the socializing of our economy and the consequent collapse of the stock market. But the discovery in question is the most vital kind, namely, that of classified national-defense information. What is in dispute is how much sensitive intelligence we must share with enemies bent on annihilating Americans ... It is one...

“The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things - bread and circuses.” - Juvenal, Satire X Of all the Supreme Court decisions of recent months, the one I find most interesting is Boumediene v. Bush, the case in which, by 5-4 decision, the court extended habeas corpus rights to prisoners being held at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, included in his argument a fascinating summary of English constitutional history, covering everything from Magna Carta to the adoption of...

Recently the Supreme Court, in a 5 to 4 decision, extended constitutional rights to enemy aliens captured on the battlefield and held outside the United States. As a result of this case, Guantanamo Bay detainees now have more rights than do prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention. This has never before been the policy of the United States, nor has the court ever before granted such rights to those detained outside of U.S. jurisdiction. The activities of a released prisoner, Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi, discussed in the following report written by the sister of the pilot killed on Flight 77...

Captive Miranda, Lord knows I have not given a thought to the paperwork you sent me. Let me tell you, Captive, that our release is not in the hands of the lawyers or the hands of America. Our release is in the hands of He who created us. The poem, "To My Captive Lawyer, Miranda," was written by Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi while he was a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. No doubt, it would have given the former detainee, who was released in 2005, immense satisfaction to know that his last earthly deed was referenced in Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting...

After reading through Boumediene v. Bush, I cannot help but feel that it is simply about the judiciary expanding its own power by usurping the clearly defined constitutional powers of Congress and the president. In essence, the Supreme Court ruled in this case that when Congress and the president followed the decisions the court itself made in crafting law regarding enemy combatants, they did not act within the bounds of our Constitution. As Chief Justice Roberts noted in his dissent, “The DTA [Detainee Treatment Act] system of military tribunal hearings followed by Article III review looks a lot like the...

Suspend the Writ. Those are both my words and the title of commentary this morning by Andrew C. McCarthy, the now former federal prosecutor who led the investigation and related prosecutions of the Landmark bomb plotters, as well as of those who conducted the first attack upon the World Trade Center: For the protection of our troops on the battlefield and the security of all Americans, Congress needs, right now, to take action to reverse Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision granting constitutional habeas-corpus rights to alien enemy combatants. It’s time to suspend the writ of habeas corpus....

Federal District judges in Washington, D.C., who will handle scores of pending and likely future challenges by Guantanamo Bay detainees to their confinement, decided on Monday to shift them temporarily to one judge to work on ways to coordinate the courts’ response. Attorneys for detainees began receiving notices Tuesday that the judges, in a closed-door session earlier in the day, had agreed that District Judge Thomas F. Hogan would handle “coordination and management” issues. The underlying cases will remain with the individual judges for future action on the merits. The judges acted after holding two meetings with lawyers for the...

For those who were perhaps backpacking in ANWR or following Tiger Woods rather than developments in Constitutional law, the latest Supreme Court Guantanamo detainee ruling, [1] Boumediene, was handed down last week.The key holding extends the right of habeas corpus to alien detainees held by the executive as “enemy combatants” incident to the “global war on terror,” at a U.S. military base on foreign territory, Guantanamo.Habeas corpus is the right to have an independent court of law review the legality of a person’s detention by the sovereign. It is an ancient right of common law, the Great Writ, imported...

Here we go. The Los Angeles Times and Voice of America report that a federal appeals court in Washington has presumed to invalidate the commander-in-chief’s determination that a wartime detainee held by the military at the Guantanamo Bay naval base is an alien enemy combatant. The detainee, Huzaifa Parhat, is a Chinese Muslim, one of nearly two dozen Uighurs captured in Afghanistan by American and allied forces after the September 11 attacks. Seventeen Uighurs are still being detained. The appeals court (which announced its ruling but has not yet released the formal decision because it contains classified information), ordered that...

    Boumediene: A Supremely Problematic Court DecisionJune 22, 2008 - by Fred Thompson As [1] I pointed out last week, and as legal scholar [2] John Yoo did earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, the “Boumediene Five” have done our nation and our Constitution no great service. But beyond the rhetoric, we really need to understand the real world impact of this ruling on the war we are waging against our enemies. In Boumediene v Bush, besides, for the first time in history conferring habeas corpus rights on alien enemies detained abroad by our military during a...

Michael Ratner (above, holding document) of the Center for Constitutional Rights rants against the country he hates most: the United States.* * * * * Much has already been written of the U.S. Supreme Court's lawless, nonsensical decision in Boumediene v. Bush that gives America's terrorist enemies unprecedented access to our civilian court system, but little has been written about the aggressively anti-American public interest law firm that helped to make it happen.* The nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights, which acted as co-counsel in the case, is deeply enmeshed in the politics of terrorism (take one guess on whose side)...

The recent Supreme Court decision of Boumediene v. Bush concerning the habeas corpus rights of enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Naval Base illustrates the need for a president who will nominate jurists that follow the Constitution and not their own political ideology. For the first time, the Court has now extended U.S. constitutional rights to foreign nationals residing outside the country. What’s all the more galling is that the recipients of this right were engaged in killing U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Now, this same court has agreed to hear the petition of a deported Pakistani national...

As I pointed out last week, and as legal scholar John Yoo did earlier this week in The Wall Street Journal, the “Boumediene Five” have done our nation and our Constitution no great service. But beyond the rhetoric, we really need to understand the real world impact of this ruling on the war we are waging against our enemies. ... Look, this issue isn’t going to go away, so consider these things the next time you hear someone defend the Supreme Court’s majority opinion as an attempt at “basic fairness” and to help prevent an innocent sheepherder from being improperly...

[Fred Thompson writes:] Our Democratic friends are once again scrambling to defend Senator Obama's latest national security gaffe. Obama supports the recent Supreme Court majority opinion in the Boumediene decision, which extended for the first time habeas corpus rights to foreign enemy combatants held abroad. The Senator went even further than the Court and said that accused terrorists should be tried in American courts as was Omar Abdel Rahman, "the blind sheik", who masterminded the first World Trade Center bombing. Last week, in a call with reporters and bloggers, I pointed out Obama's folly. The Rahman case demonstrates some of...

The Supreme Court's decision in Boumediene v. Bush is being hailed in many quarters as a great victory for civil rights and the rule of law. It is not. In fact, it is a watershed in judicial hubris, and in the continuing trend in our society to convert every form of decision making into a lawsuit. For the first time in our history, the Supreme Court has rejected the considered judgment of both the Congress and the president on an issue of national security. The writ of habeas corpus, a bulwark of domestic liberty, has been extended to foreign nationals...

LAST week’s Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v. Bush settled a key constitutional issue: all prisoners detained at Guantánamo Bay are constitutionally entitled to bring habeas corpus in federal court to challenge the legality of their detention. This 5-4 decision was correct. The conservative justices in the minority were wrong to suggest that the decision constitutes reckless judicial intervention in military matters that the Constitution reserves exclusively for Congress and the president. (Disclosure: I joined in a friend-of-the-court brief filed on the plaintiff’s behalf.) Yet Boumediene is rich in constitutional ironies. In addressing whether non-Americans detained outside the United States...

Our Constitution works best when its custodians--the president, Congress, and the judiciary--behave well. In the matter of suspected "enemy combatants," all three have behaved badly. That's why the Guantanamo Bay prison camp has been such a running sore. Even if Guantanamo ends up being closed, the human-rights and public-relations debacles that it symbolizes will continue until a new president and Congress take a grown-up approach to some extremely thorny problems. Problems such as: What should we do with a Guantanamo detainee who, the best available evidence suggests, is probably a jihadist bent on mass murder but who cannot be convicted...

Boumediene vs. Bush: The Dangers of Judicial Overreach by Mark Silverberg Undoubtedly the Supreme Court's decision in Boumediene v. Bush will be hailed in many quarters as a great victory for the rule of law. It is not. It represents the continuing trend in our society to convert every form of decision-making into a potential cause of action. For the first time in our history, the Supreme Court in Boumediene vs. Bush has rejected the judgment of both the Congress and the President on an issue of national security. The writ of habeas corpus has now been extended to foreign...

The John McCain campaign continued to roll out its heavy artillery by featuring former Senator and presidential hopeful Fred Thompson. The McCain campaign had Rudy Giuliani speaking yesterday, and the former-opponent tour took a turn through seriously conservative territory with Thompson. Jill Hazelbaker started off by reading a statement declaring Barack Obama as “just another typical politician” by rejecting public financing in the election. They noted that Obama is the first candidate since Watergate to do so, and accused him of not keeping his word. Fred Thompson then appeared on the call to discuss Boumediene and the political reaction to...

Justice: Does Barack Obama think Osama bin Laden has a right to an attorney and should be read his Miranda rights if captured? As shocking as this is, it's in the proud tradition of his party.In an interview with ABC News on Monday, Obama indicated that, like President Bill Clinton in 1993 after the first bombing of the World Trade Center, he too would treat the war on terror as a law enforcement matter. In defense of the recent Boumediene decision giving habeas corpus rights to enemy combatants, the Democrats' 2008 standard bearer said it was his "firm belief that...

THE president of the United States has the power to attack, and perhaps destroy, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the illegal cartel that has driven the price of oil over $130 per barrel. This can be accomplished without invasion or bombing. No special legislation is needed. The president need simply allow the states to seek relief in the Supreme Court under our antitrust laws. The oil ministers of the OPEC countries meet periodically to set production quotas for the cartel’s members and in the process establish an artificially high price for crude oil. Under our antitrust laws, this...

John Yoo published this article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about the Supreme Court's Boumediene ruling. He makes too many claims for me to respond to here in a blog post, but let me address a handful. 1. Yoo: "Under the writ of habeas corpus, Americans (and aliens on our territory) can challenge the legality of their detentions before a federal judge." This is an astonishing statement coming from a former Department of Justice official like John Yoo. I say that because Americans were locked up in military brigs as "enemy combatants." And their attorneys did file habeas corpus...

JUSTICE KENNEDY: AMERICAN IDLEJune 18, 2008 After reading Justice Anthony Kennedy's recent majority opinion in Boumediene v. Bush, I feel like I need to install a "1984"-style Big Brother camera in my home so Justice Kennedy can keep an eye on everything I do. Until last week, the law had been that there were some places in the world where American courts had no jurisdiction. For example, U.S. courts had no jurisdiction over non-citizens who have never set foot in the United States. But now, even aliens get special constitutional privileges merely for being caught on a battlefield trying to...

As Justice Scalia said in his dissent, this will definitely be a decision America will regret. Justice Roberts nails exactly what this is:Roberts laments, “All today’s opinion has done is shift responsibility for those sensitive foreign policy and national security decisions from the elected branches to the Federal Judiciary.” He concluded that Congress’ balancing “the security of the American people” with detainees’ rights has been “brushed aside,” and that the American people have lost control of foreign policy to unelected and politically-unaccountable judges. This is absolutely judicial tyranny, and a definite overstepping of the Court’s boundaries. Some are suggesting impeachment.How...

"Security depends upon a sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our armed forces to act and to interdict. There are further considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom's first principles." Advertisement So wrote U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in his majority opinion, of the 5 to 4 ruling in Boumediene v. Bush. While no one could dispute Justice Kennedy's principled phrasing, this may be one of the worst Supreme Court decisions since the 1857 Dred Scott case. As the rationale for granting habeas corpus rights to enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Justice Kennedy appealed...

Mark Levin pens another cogent analysis in dissenting against George Will's column and the latest Supreme Court assertion of governmental branch supremacy. Within, Mark says: And that "black hole" exists for two primary reasons: 1. to detain unlawful and lawful combatants until the end of hostilities, thereby keeping them off the battlefield where they can kill American soldiers and, in the case of terrorists, kill civilians (as they have extended the battlefield to our cities); and 2. to interrogate the detainees to secure information that might save the lives of American soldiers and civilians. Now, it seems to me that...

The day after the Supreme Court ruled that detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo are entitled to seek habeas corpus hearings, John McCain called it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." Well. Does it rank with Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), which concocted a constitutional right, unmentioned in the document, to own slaves and held that black people have no rights that white people are bound to respect? With Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which affirmed the constitutionality of legally enforced racial segregation? With Korematsu v. United States (1944), which affirmed the wartime right to sweep American citizens...

Undoubtedly the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush will be hailed in many quarters as a great victory for the rule of law. It is not. It represents the continuing trend in our society to convert every form of decision making into a cause of action. For the first time in our history, the Supreme Court in Boumediene vs. Bush has rejected the judgment of both the Congress and the President on an issue of national security. The writ of habeas corpus has now been extended to foreign nationals whose only connection to the United States is their capture...

The Supreme Court's Boumediene v. Bush used the U.S. Constitution to find extraordinary rights for the very same people trying to destroy that Constitution. In doing so, the five liberal members of the U.S. Supreme Court taped a "KICK ME!" signs to their own backs. But unlike other Kick Me Liberals, in the Supreme Court's case, they've also taped that sign onto the backs of 300 million of their countrymen. A few examples of Kick Me Liberals. United States Supreme Court Incredibly, these five Justices [the Court's liberal bloc of Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Ginsburg and Stephen...

'It Will Almost Certainly Cause More Americans to Be Killed' by Joel J. Sprayregen The Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling last week means that terrorism detainees captured overseas have the same rights as U.S. citizens facing shoplifting trials at home. This unprecedented expansion of habeas was not a victory, as liberal media smirked, over the President. It was a judicial nullification of procedures carefulyy crafted by both elected branches of Government of procedures carefully tailored to allow review of detentions while remaining mindful of the terrorist threat. The smallest of majorities is disregarding judicial history and pretending we live in a...

Exclusive: Justice Scalia on Gitmo Terror Ruling: It Endangers American Lives by Joel Himelfarb Justice Antonin Scalia offered a chilling observation about last week's 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that terror suspects currently being held at Guantanamo Bay have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in federal court. The decision, which is based on a fundamental misreading of the Constitution and existing case law, "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed," Scalia wrote in a blistering dissent, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Cut through close to 40 pages of nearly...

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 opinion in Boumediene v. Bush will go down as one of the most egregiously-wrong decisions in history. Breaking 200 years of settled precedent, the Court has rewritten the Constitution’s allocation of national security powers. In essence, the narrow majority attacked the actions of a Commander-in-Chief in time of war. It attacked the law as rewritten by Congress in response to a prior decision of this very Court. And. it attacked the Court by aggressively ignoring its own prior decisions. The "logic" of this case sets up a bare majority of the Justices as supreme over the...

Last week's Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v. Bush has been painted as a stinging rebuke of the administration's antiterrorism policies. From the celebrations on most U.S. editorial pages, one might think that the court had stopped a dictator from trampling civil liberties. Boumediene did anything but. The 5-4 ruling is judicial imperialism of the highest order.

Much has already been written of the U.S. Supreme Court's lawless, nonsensical decision in Boumediene v. Bush, the ruling that gives America's terrorist enemies unprecedented access to our civilian court system, but little has been written about the aggressively anti-American public interest law firm that helped to make it happen. (You can't miss the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin's idiotic, ahistorical ballad in which he grossly misrepresents the views of the Founding Fathers.) The Center for Constitutional Rights, which acted as co-counsel in the case, is jumping for joy, hailing the decision handed down this week as a great triumph for...

A Quick Way Forward After Boumediene By Andrew C. McCarthy It is difficult to single out the most outrageous aspect of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s cataclysmic Boumediene ruling last Thursday: The reckless vesting of constitutional rights in aliens whose only connection with our body politic is their bloody jihad against Americans; the roughshod ride over binding precedent to accomplish that feat; or the smug arrogance perfectly captured by dissenting Chief Justice John Roberts’s description of a “constitutional bait and switch” — a Court that first beseeches the political branches to enact a statutory procedure for...

Don’t You Know There’s a War Going On? Jeffrey Imm I am sending U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy a framed copy of a photograph of the remains of the World Trade Center West building after the 9/11 attacks with a note "Don't You Know There's A War On?" The Real Headline: "U.S. Supreme Court Doesn't Think We Are At War with Jihad"On June 12, 2008, the majority on the Supreme Court ruled in "Boumediene v. Bush," that habeas corpus rights guaranteed to American citizens under the Constitution will be extended to foreign Jihadist enemy combatants currently held at the...

It is difficult to single out the most outrageous aspect of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s cataclysmic Boumediene ruling last Thursday: The reckless vesting of constitutional rights in aliens whose only connection with our body politic is their bloody jihad against Americans; the roughshod ride over binding precedent to accomplish that feat; or the smug arrogance perfectly captured by dissenting Chief Justice John Roberts’s description of a “constitutional bait and switch” — a Court that first beseeches the political branches to enact a statutory procedure for handling combatant detentions, and then, once a thoughtful law is...

The Supreme Court's decision that detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have a right to challenge their imprisonment before a judge revealed in vivid detail the justices' deep divide over the role of the judiciary in wartime As a practical matter, the 5 to 4 decision returns to the spotlight Washington's federal district judges, who are now conferring to develop a framework for handling about 200 cases filed by those the government suspects of terrorism held at the island naval base. It is a role that practically consumed the court until Congress, at the behest of the Bush administration, stripped...

So it is extraordinary that during the Bush administration's seven years, nearly all of them a time of war that began on Sept. 11, 2001, the court has been prompted to push back four times. Last week's decision in Boumediene v. Bush, in which the court ruled that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have a right to challenge their detentions in the federal courts, marks only the most recent rebuke. It is not hard to see why the court has traditionally been so quick to side with presidents during armed conflicts. The justices presumably lack the expertise of White House military...

Five members of the US Supreme Court just sided with known terrorists currently detained at Gitmo in Cuba. In doing so, they not only provided “aid and comfort” to enemies of our state, but offered Constitutional Rights written solely to protect the rights of innocent legal US citizens to known terrorists, and placed every American life in mortal danger in that process. You can read the USA Today column on the subject here. Our silence is our consent. We have been far too tolerant for far too long. We can no longer afford to be silent in our dissent my...

"Justice Scalia is right that today’s opinion will result in the death of Americans. His words remind me of the beleaguered FBI agent, Harry Sammit, who pleaded with his superiors at FBI headquarters to be allowed to launch a nationwide manhunt for Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi, two of the hijackers on my brother’s plane, 3 weeks before 9/11. He was turned down by the lawyers in the National Security Law Unit of the FBI, who cited the FISA law that prevented this intelligence information from being used by the criminal division. The point of that law — known as...

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...