SCOTUS Grants Guantanamo Prisoners Habeas Corpus 1065
beebee and other readers sent word that the US Supreme Court has, by a 5 to 4 majority, ruled that the Constitution applies at Guantanamo. Accused terrorists can now go to federal court to challenge their continued detention (the right to habeas corpus), meaning that civil judges will now have the power to check the government's designation of Gitmo detainees as enemy combatants. This should remedy one of the major issues Human Rights activists have with the detention center. However, Gitmo is unlikely to close any time soon. The NYTimes reporting on the SCOTUS decision goes into more detail on the vigor of the minority opinion. McClatchy reports the outrage the decision has caused on the right, with one senator calling for a Constitutional amendment "to blunt the effect of this decision."
About time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sudden? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Funny)
Even scarier... (Score:5, Insightful)
The minority opinion (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Earier Supremes say it's okay for Bush to deny Habeous in US criminal courts so long as an alternative is provided that is substanially simmiar to the habeous right to contest incarceration.
2) congress provides an alternative tribunal system that fulfills this requirement
3) Said new tribunal turns around and refuses to hear any Habeous claims because it decrees the prisoners have no Habeous rights. (WILD!)
4) Today's court ruling reverses that saying they do have habeous rights.
The question then is Does it go back to the Kangaroo court or to a real crimminal court for hearing of habeous claims. I think this is the point of contention.
Also here's a link [slashdot.org] to a longer slashdot post that talks about this:
You want to be really scared? (Score:5, Interesting)
Read the dissenting opinion.
Bolding mine. How would anyone know if they've tried to use the courts if they haven't had access to them in the first place? And saying that Habeas Corpus isn't a "time-honored legal principal"?
Amazing, isn't it?
Quotes taken from here. [dailykos.com]
Re:You want to be really scared? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, the Supreme Court apparently did argue that privately-grown marijuana (legal in a few states) can be "regulated" by the federal government because it interferes with commercial marijuana traffic (illegal under federal law). They actually did decide in favor of illegal drug traffic and against the legal local producer.
Professional satirists wouldn't have the nerve to come up with a plot line like this.
Re:Even scarier... (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the major problems with that approach, even if valid, is that the government can just claim anyone they're holding isn't an American citizen.
How do you get your chance to prove you are or tell your side of the story? Right.
When the government can get away with throwing anyone in a cell and essentially throwing away the key, it should scare the fuck out of all of us a lot more than terrorism ever could.
Re:Even scarier... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Even scarier... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Even scarier... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I wasn't a terrorist or enemy of a country before, after pissing away 6 years of my life for doing nothing I sure as heck would hold a grudge. If the opportunity ever arose to do something that might hurt that country, i sure would. For some people it may be choosing to take your business to different countries. For others it may mean forming a terrorist group and commiting acts of terrorism. It is unfortunate but bad blood makes more bad blood. Not to mention the families of these people who have been jailed. Even the totally innocent ones will be pissed off and very anti US.
Re:Even scarier... (Score:5, Insightful)
You've missed the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
What I want though is to first FIGURE OUT WHO IS A TERRORIST AND WHO IS NOT.
Just because the executive branch SAYS they are a terrorist doesn't mean they are actually a terrorist. And in fact, quite a few of the Gitmo detainees seem to quite obviously NOT be terrorists, but just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
So what I want is for ACCUSED terrorists to be given a trial, and then all the ones found guilty can rot in Gitmo or be shot as appropriate.
But what I do NOT want is for our government to be able to grab random people and toss them in prison for as long as they feel like - even if they do tricky things like put the prisons in other countries. Because if its OK for our government to do it, then its OK for other governments to do it, and that would crimp my travel plans.
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Interesting)
There was an Italian prisoner of war camp in the Orkney Islands, north of Scotland; a lot of the prisoners of war decided not to go back to Italy after the war and stayed there, marrying locals.
The place is worth a visit; among other things, the prisoners painted frescoes on the ceiling of the Nissen Hut they were using as a chapel. It's gorgeous, and still an active church.
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Insightful)
Marshall Plan? (Score:5, Insightful)
I could go on, but you get the idea.
It's amazing how many "STAY THE COURSE!" people don't know about this.
Re:Marshall Plan? (Score:5, Insightful)
All it takes is a handful of well-armed people to topple a government. It's not necessarily that the people don't want a democracy (I'm not Iraqi, so I don't know... but the Iraqi I used to work with was in favour of democratizing the country), it's that there's enough people who don't want one still running around with guns and bombs. The local police/defense force simply isn't strong enough to cope with them yet.
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Insightful)
The number of differences between Iraq and Postwar Germany are staggering:
1) The Bush Administration had no coherent post was plan. The Marshall Pan was very well thought out was being implemented even before the end of hostilities. We finished the war already prepared for, and in some cases already implementing, the rebuilding plan. What we're doing in Iraq may be to little and is certainly too late.
2) The Germans had a long tradition of self government, and the allies forgave former Nazi's who could reasonably show that they had not been involved in war crimes. This meant that the new German government could rely on the experience of life long government administrators. Most had worked for the Weimars before the Nazis, some had even worked for the Kaiser before that. It was simple enough to build a new government that more or less mirrored the old structure, just without the evil dictator at the top. By contrast the Iraqis have no real tradition of self government, having been under a series of colonial governors, hereditary kings and various strongmen for the last hundred or so years at least. We also "de-bathified" what experienced government officials existed, without giving them any chance to show whether or not they deserved it.
3) Germany did not have two (three if you count the Kurds) major ethnic groups that never really liked each other and only tolerated each other because they could agree on a mutual dislike of Saddam. Tragically this was at least partly because all of the other ethnic groups in Germany had been decimated by concentration camps, but it all the same it did make make post war integration easier.
4) Germany, the US and most of the other Axis and Allied powers could see, almost immediately after the War, that it was in all of their best interests to rebuild everything they could and stick together, because there was a serious mutual threat sitting off to the east. However much Germans mistrusted Brits and Americans or vice versa, they were all mutually terrified of what the USSR was doing. There is no such powerful motivator acting in Iraq.
The list goes on of course. Comparing the current situation to post War Europe is completely ridiculous. We are NEVER going to turn Iraq into the "Germany" of the Middles East. 6 years on, the best we can say is that the government is less oppressive that the old one, mostly because it's too damned incompetent to impose its will. The worst we can say is that in all ways other than a less oppressive government, the life of Ali the average Iraqi is worse than it was when we started. Who hoo.
I used to think that it was our moral obligation to leave Iraq at least as nice as we found it (though I thought we never should have invaded in the first place), but given that after all of these years it's obvious that:
a) we're incompetent boobs who screwed up the first 4 years of rebuilding and
b) The Iraqis themselves no longer seem to want our help
I think it's time to move on.
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Funny)
Ummm. Sorry.
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Interesting)
The failure to have a cohesive, worst case scenario, plan for how we were going to rebuild Iraq and make its people our bestest friends is the single biggest failure of an administration fraught with colossal failures. Since impeachment of the president is impossible given the current layout of Senate, the best I an hope for is that this administration is simply remembered by history as the worst in modern history.
I served in a New Orleans, Louisiana based National Guard Field Artillery Battalion. We went over to Iraq to fight in the war that the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence reports to justify and failed to properly plan for. In our last month in country we watched from satellite television as a hurricane tore our city apart, and that same administration failed to provide relief. I then spent a year living in the city that the administration all but abandoned. At this point, if George W. Bush says the sky is blue, I'm walking outside to make sure it hasn't turned purple while I was typing this post.
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Interesting)
We could have easily taken 1% of that, had a sit-down with Saddam Hussein and said, "look, you and your family and your core leadership take this money and transition quickly out of power and set up in a nice Caribbean resort for the rest of your life, and we won't wipe you out," then gradually shifted to a more representative government, and still had 2.7 trillion to throw around for little things like rebuilding after Katrina, widespread environmental projects, and lap dances for every adult male in America and Iraq put together.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Insightful)
True. In the case of the Nazi, you know he's an enemy.
With many of those in Guantanamo, we didn't have that assurance before we put them there.
(Though, to be fair, we can probably pretty much count on it now.)
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever see Control Room [imdb.com]? It's mostly about Al Jazeera, which most Americans consider to be the media arm of Al Qaida. That's nonsense, of course, but they do put on a lot of stuff that makes us look bad. They also have a lot of reason to be pissed at us, not just over the war, but because the believe that U.S. forces have been deliberately targeting their reporters.
And yet their individual attitudes towards the U.S. are surprisingly positive. One reporter admits he'd like nothing better than to get an offer from Fox News, move to the U.S., and educate his children here. Another says that he has an infinite faith in the U.S. constitution.
His faith would seem to have been vindicated.
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Informative)
Some of these people were kidnapped by warlords, and handed over for a large sum of money.
Basically, the US is paying criminals to kidnap innocents, and then they imprison and torture these poor people, without a chance to be tried or heard or to have contact with the outside world. Their families might not even know what happened to them. They just disapeared.
The US has become the monster in the night that people fear.
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Funny)
We are Legend.
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Informative)
If you or I or anyone in the United States went and planted landmines, and there was a videotape of the crime, we would go to jail for a very long time. Fair trial or not.
Whether Khadr was tortured or not changes nothing : he still committed the crime.
The videotape was not obtained using evidence from torture, either.
Nevertheless, I do agree he was abused. The kid probably knows nothing, and they tortured the heck out of him anyways.
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Insightful)
There was also a much smaller culture clash in Europe. It was, essentially, Europe or Europe-spawned nations fighting each other. Languages and national quirks aside, the most values of the nations involved were (and are) pretty similar.
I haven't had a chance to read the decision yet, so I don't want to bank on nuances that may be present and which some reporters have mentioned. However, if this does indeed close the loophole that has been present for the last several years, it will make me feel a lot better about how evenly the Constitution is applied to US facilities not on US soil. It's my feeling -- and I hope the majority feels the same way -- that effective US soil such as permanent bases and US-government-owned ships at sea should be places where the Constitution applies in full.
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Insightful)
If we had followed the same policy at Gitmo, the detainees would probably be demanding to enlisted in the U.S. forces by now. But no, the only way Bushcheney knows how to deal with opposition is "get tough."
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Informative)
Salient extract from the summary:
1. Fifty-five percent (55%) of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies.
2. Only 8% of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40% have no definitive connection with al Qaeda at all and 18% are have no definitive affiliation with either al Qaeda or the Taliban.
3. The Government has detained numerous persons based on mere affiliations with a large number of groups that in fact, are not on the Department of Homeland Security terrorist watchlist. Moreover, the nexus between such a detainee and such organizations varies considerably. Eight percent are detained because they are deemed âoefighters for;â 30% considered âoemembers of;â a large majority â" 60% -- are detained merely because they are âoeassociated withâ a group or groups the Government asserts are terrorist organizations. For 2% of the prisoners their nexus to any terrorist group is unidentified.
4. Only 5% of the detainees were captured by United States forces. 86% of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody.
Also from the report:
The United States promised (and apparently paid) large sums of money for the capture of persons identified as enemy combatants in Afghanistan and Pakistan. One representative flyer, distributed in Afghanistan, states:
Get wealth and power beyond your dreams....You can receive millions of dollars helping the anti-Taliban forces catch al-Qaida and Taliban murders. This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life. Pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people.
Bounty hunters or reward-seekers handed people over to American or Northern Alliance soldiers in the field, often soon after disappearing; as a result, there was little opportunity on the field to verify the story of an individual who presented the detainee in response to the bounty award.
I think the report is fairly damning.
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Informative)
There are a lot of people who deserve suffering. Many throughout the world might hold the US Joint Chiefs of Staff as culpable for comparable losses to their loved ones - and then the people who pay for and support them. But law, national or international, isn't about the grudges of the wronged.
Re:Sudden? (Score:5, Informative)
Hardly an outbreak of common sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
-Sean
Re:Hardly an outbreak of common sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hardly an outbreak of common sense... (Score:4, Interesting)
-Sean
I'm not sure I agree with you. The court throughout its history has had 5-4 (or otherwise decided by 1 vote) cases because they seldom accept cases which aren't close. That is, if it isn't a legal point on which there's substantial disagreement, the Court won't grant cert. Moreover, members may concur in the result of the case, but not the legal reasoning, so they end up joining only certain sections of the majority (or plurality) opinion.
Close cases will always be a part of the Supreme Court. I would say that is the way we want it, most of the time.
In this instant case, I think more of the justices should have agreed with the majority, but they didn't ask me...
Re:Hardly an outbreak of common sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hardly an outbreak of common sense... (Score:5, Informative)
So the point is not that the Magna Carta is legally binding precedent under US law: it's that it any rights which were guaranteed to individuals under the Magna Carta should be considered obviously settled by now.
Incidentally, I found the following further down in that article [wikipedia.org]:
That particular decision [ceb.com] contains the following passage:
So the Magna Carta is important for consideration not only because of its influence on the US Constitution, but also because it has been cited in US case law.
Re:Hardly an outbreak of common sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it hard that even really smart people like Scalia don't understand this basic point: they can't defeat us. Period. Only we can defeat ourselves by stripping away the principles that make us who we are.
So in answer to your question, "how many". I say it doesn't matter since even a nuke in Manhattan can't destroy the Constitution. Only "We The People" through our cowardly elected leaders and the cowards like Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito that inhabit the SCOTUS can do that... and we're well on our way.
Re:Hardly an outbreak of common sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, the rest of us consider habeas corpus to be a basic human right.... and by your logic, those contractors that got killed and dragged through that Iraqi city got just what they deserved. After all, they weren't Iraqi citizens, so the law need not apply, right?
Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm at a loss as to how anyone can be upset at this decision. Its not like we're turning known terrorists out onto American streets. We're just saying that the people being detained have a right to challenge their detainment.
Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too! (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a little thought experiment. The British (or Germans, or Japanese,
so who are you at war with? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's one of the thing that really worries a lot of us. We don't trust your government, so we generalise and say "we don't trust the USA or its people". That's sad and not very healthy.
Even the top people on the losing side of World War 2 got trials and lawyers. You are saying that the people in Guantanamo Bay have carried out significantly worse acts than the people who stood in the Nuremburg trials?
Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too! (Score:5, Interesting)
In 2003, Khalid El-Masri, a Kuwait-born citizen with German nationality, was detained by Macedonian agents in the Republic of Macedonia. While on vacation in Macedonia, local police, apparently acting on a tip, took him off a bus, held him for three weeks, then took him to the Skopje airport where he was turned over to the CIA.
El-Masri says he was injected with drugs, and after his flight, he woke up in an American-run prison in Afghanistan containing prisoners from Pakistan, Tanzania, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. El-Masri said that he was held five months and interrogated by Americans through an interpreter. He declared that he had been beaten and kept in solitary confinement. Participating in some of these interrogation sessions was an officer of the German foreign intelligence service (Bundesnachrichtendienst or BND) using the pseudonym "Sam", who has reportedly been identified by al-Masri as Gerhard Lehmann. Lehmann served on the UN Mehlis commission into the Rafik Hariri assassination before he was withdrawn in early February 2006, possibly to prevent the repercussions of his identification.[39]
Then, after his five months of questioning, he was simply released. "They told me that they had confused names and that they had cleared it up, but I can't imagine that," El-Masri told ABC News. "You can clear up switching names in a few minutes." Khalid el-Masri had allegedly been confused with Khalid al-Masri, wanted for contacts with the Hamburg Cell involved in the September 2001 attacks.
Khalid el-Masri was then flown out of Afghanistan and dumped on a road in Albania, from where he made his way back home in Germany. Using a method called isotope analysis, scientists at the Bavarian archive for geology in Munich subsequently analyzed several strands of his hair and verified his story. During a visit to Washington, German Interior Minister Otto Schily was told that American agents admitted to kidnapping El-Masri, and indicated that the matter had somehow got out of hand. Masri was held for five months largely because the head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's al Qaeda unit "believed he was someone else," one former CIA official said. "She didn't really know. She just had a hunch."
Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too! (Score:4, Insightful)
And me without mod points. Damn.
Very well said, students in school should be forced to repeat this statement until they understand what it means.
Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too! (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea of not torturing someone until they confess -- quaint, really. He wants a fair trial? Oh, how cute. Thinks we're being unjust in keeping him in jail for years without charging him with anything? Aww, poor baby.
History will judge this administration, and us for not speaking out against it. And history will not be kind.
Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too! (Score:4, Interesting)
Kind of like how the US would spy on British citizens of interest while they did the same to the US, and then share the info. Got around the constitutionality of wiretapping citizens... Until we decided to cut out the middle man.
Re: Extend welfare and voting rights too! (Score:4, Insightful)
stupid, confusing war on terror... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, reaching back to FDR, they pull this "enemy combatant" thing out of their ass and say that now they can do whatever they want. Now, the Supreme Court is saying that "enemy combatants" are somehow criminals who are entitled to the protections of the civilian legal system.
If they were just reclassified as POWs, then they could be held until the war is over -- which, like the war on drugs, it never will be. So, they could be held forever, without any need for a trial - because you can't be tried for "murder" or "conspiring to murder Americans" if you are a soldier in time of war.
But yet, Bush &co still aren't going to want to reclassify them as POWs.
Jeebus. I seriously can't wait to get a new administration that will just settle on what the status of these prisoners is so that we don't have to hear about this crap anymore. Want to keep them forever? Call them POWs. Want to try them to make some sort of b.s. point like Nuremberg? Then they get the protection of a court system.
I'm really not seeing how they can have it both ways, but then again I'm not a lawyer -- just a human (usually an exclusive option).
Re:stupid, confusing war on terror... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:stupid, confusing war on terror... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:stupid, confusing war on terror... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:stupid, confusing war on terror... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:stupid, confusing war on terror... (Score:5, Informative)
You see, George John Dasch was one of the enemy sabeteurs, but he actually hated the Nazis. He took this to be a chance to defect to the US. Ernst Peter Burger, another one of the sabeteuers, was like-minded. The two of them tried very hard to turn themselves in, but were stopped by an unbelieving FBI. Dasch was only able to turn himself in when he threw $84,000 in mission funds onto the desk of a FBI agent. Under interrogation, he revealed the whole Nazi plan.
But the FBI claimed it was their great work that lead to the capture of the Germans. All the Germans were placed on trial before a military tribunal. The original verdict was a recommendation of death, even for the man who turned the group in. Burger's sentence was commutted to life, and Dasch was sentenced to 30 years in prison. It was only after W.W.II ended that the truth came out, and they were released and deported to Germany.
Without trial, the truth will never go out. As a democratic society, we have to dedicate ourselves to protect civil rights for all.
Re:stupid, confusing war on terror... (Score:5, Interesting)
My grandfather was an Electrician in the US Navy, and an American of German heritage. He was scheduled to ship out from NY to Africa to lay cabling for airstrips during WWII, but as he was about to board his ship, the "G-Men" grabbed him for interrogation to see if, as a German, he knew anything about his U-Boat off the coast of Long Island. He didn't, of course, and wasn't involved, but by the time the Feds were done with him, his ship had already left port, and he had to be reassigned.
It turns out that his ship was sunk in the Atlantic by a Wolf Pack, and all hands onboard were lost. My Grandfather, of course, survived and went on to meet and marry my Grandmother, who gave birth to my Mother. Thus, I (and my Mother) owe my very existance to the odd actions and timing of the FBI at this point in history.
Re:stupid, confusing war on terror... (Score:4, Insightful)
More good reading on the decision (Score:5, Informative)
Recommended reading that didn't make it into this story's writeup:
Glenn Greenwald, Supreme Court restores habeas corpus [salon.com]:
Glenn Greenwald, Conservative vs. authoritarianism [salon.com]:
The decision itself [scotusblog.com], with my favorite passage being:
In that passage, the Court upbraids the Bush administration, which sought this unconstitutional law and argued to uphold it, for claiming that the President has the right to "switch the Constitution on or off at will." The Court is absolutely correct about this, there is no doubt that this is what our current President has attempted. And the Court is correct that this is an attempt to circumvent the system of separation of powers that is at the heart of the "basic charter" on which the United States was founded.
The fact that this decision was a slim 5-4 majority, with this President's two appointees making up half the dissenting view, is a frightening thought.
One can only pity the cowards... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're the farthest thing from it. Real patriots understand why we must defend these rights, even at the cost of our lives -- because without them, we aren't the United States of America; we're just another transient tinpot dictatorship of no value and no lasting importance.
5-4 Majority (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes you wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sometimes you wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
$0.02USD,
-l
Time lag (Score:5, Insightful)
So it takes approximately 7 years between blatently unconstitutional actions by one branch to be reviewed and overturned by another branch.
Fortunately for Congress and the President, they can pass new laws and executive orders on time scales shorter than 7 years.
In between lies the downfall of democracy.
Finally... (Score:5, Insightful)
For everyone who makes fun of trying suspected terrorists in "ordinary" criminal courts, if it's sufficient for bringing murderers with less grandiose motives to justice, it'll do for ones who think they're doing it for some great cause. Heck, it's possibly more insulting to treat them like common criminals, if that's what makes you happy.
It's a great day to be an American.
We've only had habeas corpus since the 12th C. (Score:5, Interesting)
These fundamental freedoms are MORE important, not LESS important, during times of national stress. It is those times when cowards like Bush are most prepared to sell our freedom, so hard-won over the centuries, for the promise of a little temporary security.
Guantanamo is Bush's Manzanar. In the hysteria of the time it might have seemed like the right thing to do, to a few frightened people. The judgment of history will be firmly otherwise.
Chief Justice Roberts : Doesn't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, aren't Judges supposed to be insulated and protected from the political system by (1) not being held accountable for untainted, but bad, decisions (2) not be part of the election process since that would mean that they would then rule in whatever way would best protect their jobs?
How in the WORLD would a chief justice of the supreme court not understand that?
Hudson Institute outright lying on Constitution (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll skip details on the other ways the guy embarrassed himself to any thinking audience - he tried maligning the Canadian's credentials at American law until the guy mentioned teaching at Harvard, for instance.
But towards the end, he actually said that the American constitution provides an exception to "for the Executive to suspend Habeas Corpus in time of WAR or insurrection" (emphasis mine). It doesn't. And there's no way a professional at that level made that big a mistake.
The framers chose all their words carefully, and it says:
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html [usconstitution.net]
Section 9 - Limits on Congress
The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
INVASION, not War. What do Invasion and Rebellion have in common? Only then do you have entire armies on American soil harming its public. Only when you'd have to give whole armies habeas corpus can you suspend it. If you have few enough enemies to manage with a court system, they all get the court system.
I guess I'm steamed because it was just the night before I learned the stat that not only did 70% of Americans at one point believe Saddam personally set up 9/11, but 80% of those supporting the Iraw war did so because of that belief. Which means that terrible damage can be done to America, not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocents, by lies such as the one I heard, espoused on TV, last night.
I leave it to the Americans on
Oh, yeah, and one other part of the lie, one in support of their endless reaching for Executive power: the exception to habeas corpus is for the CONGRESS, not the Executive. The Executive can't suspend it at ALL, not unless Congress passes a law allowing it. The Executive simply can't break the law, period. Not under the Constitution.
If you can keep it.
Original Intent of the Framers (Score:5, Insightful)
The Declaration of Independence states that certain rights are endowed upon men by their Creator and unalienable. Among those are Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness.
The charges against King George which justified the revolution included, "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power" and "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences".
The preamble to the Constitution itself lists one of the reasons for its ordination as to "establish justice".
Article III section 2 states that the judicial power of the Supreme Court and the inferior courts extends to people including "a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects".
The 5th Amendment provides for indictment by grand jury and due process of law. It makes an exception for those serving in the military during war or public danger, but enemy combatants whether on the field of battle lawfully or unlawfully are not serving in our military.
The 6th Amendment requires that one be informed of the charges, to be confronted by witnesses against him, to have the power to subpoena witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel. No exception for military or maritime conditions are made in this Amendment.
Considering all of these facts, and considering that the founders who wrote and supported the one document were the writers and supporters of the other, I find it difficult to believe that anyone could seriously question the legal status of people being held as criminals indefinitely under the power of the United States.
The government specifically denied that these people were POWs. If they had been POWs, they could have been held until the end of hostilities with the countries in which they were captured. Being held as criminals, though, they have no fewer rights than American citizens under the US Constitution from what I can tell.
There's nothing I've read in the Constitution which says that non-citizens under the government's jurisdiction are to be treated differently from citizens in matters of criminal law. In fact, while the Constitution at one time allowed the historic fact of brutal slavery and racial subjugation, the Articles and the Amendments make clear distinctions in many cases between the words "citizen" and "person", and most of the protections are for the more generic "person". Now slavery is properly banned by the Constitution. Foreign parties accused of crimes should not be treated any differently than citizens, or what have we learned?
Constitution 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
We, the people, create a government to protect those rights. In the USA, we (our forefathers) wrote a Constitution that our representatives explicitly agreed to support and defend. That Constitution creates a government from nothing, that protects those rights.
Those rights are inalienable. Even when the government fails to protect them, we still have those rights. But unless they're protected, we might not have the freedom to exercise them. That is why we create that government, which has no other power or even existence other than as we create it under the Constitution.
Americans aren't magically different from any other people. All people have the same inalienable rights. But what Americans have that is different is an American government that protects those rights. Foreigners have their own governments. It's up to them to protect their rights with their governments. Often they do not. But though it is in America's interest to help everyone we can to protect their rights, it is not automatically America's government's obligation to do so, unless Americans so instruct it. Even when we do, America is obligated to merely help those people free themselves , so they are free to create their own governments to protect their own rights.
That is what is fundamentally wrong with the Iraq War. Wrong with any occupying American government abroad. It's what was right with the US conversion of Japan and Germany from their tyrannies after WWII: we worked for several years to free those people, who then created their own governments.
But though we're not obligated to free anyone but ourselves, though our government is not obligated to protect anyone's rights but our own, our government is never free to violate those rights. The US government has no powers to violate any rights, except temporarily, according to explicit due process, and only when necessary to protect the rights of other Americans - like when jailing criminals, even suspending their rights to vote, freely travel and associate, and even to express themselves.
Americans in foreign lands have reduced protection of our rights by our government, as a matter of practical fact, but not from any change in our rights themselves. Foreigners in foreign lands have foreign governments that factor into the US ability and obligation to protect their rights, which is minimal.
But no one under control of the US, in US territory (including soverign military territory like Guantanamo) can see their rights infringed in any way.
Sometimes that happens. Sometimes the people in the government break the law, violate the Constitution. The Constitution of course has the remedy: prosecution and jail time, even impeachment. The Constitution isn't just some theoretical philosophy, but the only instrument which creates legitimate government power. And its power does not differ in application to anyone on US soil (with the sole and irrelevant exception that a US president must have been born American).
There shouldn't have been any question that Habeas Corpus must apply to everyone in US custody. But of course the 4 dissenting "Justices" in this case also installed George Bush as president. These people are part of a blatantly, flagrantly anti-American conspiracy among themselves to destroy America and everything it stands for.
Everyone knows it. Lots of us say it. But only far too few of us have the courage and integrity to live it. And we, the Americans with a clear conscience, want to bring these evildoers to justice [dailykos.com].
The Constitution. Dodging a bullet today that should never have been fired, that should have seen millions of Americans jumping to take the hit. The closeness of this call is just one 87 year old man away from making a total mockery of America as "the land of the free, the home of the brave."
Re:Constitution 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
60% Informative
20% Troll
20% Insightful
20% of your trusty moderators think defending the Constitution is "trolling". Probably because it points out that their heroes are the ones attacking the Constitution. When these people who hate America, and the way we protect our freedoms, hear the truth, they automatically counterattack. No matter how dishonest and cowardly is their method.
These are the people we must defend our Constitution from. They're the ones we're talking about when we say "all enemies, foreign and domestic".
SCOTUS does its job. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not the job of SCOTUS to be safe and responsible. It is the job of SCOTUS to knock down unconstitutional laws.
read the constitution (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ironic.. (Score:4, Insightful)
FTFA:
Of course, in WWII, Congress had declared war. The rules may be different in times of war, but, fortunately, our legal system does not recognize laws against concepts/behaviors/tactics.
Is that a "totalitarianism in the US" post; if so, this ruling is great for returning to a rule of law. Is that a "why are soldiers forced to go far away and die" post; if so, because that's what soldiers agree can happen, and the political will of the country, rightly or wrongly, sent them to fight. Is that a "terrorists deserve no rights, scumbags" post; if so, I would point out that these are accused terrorists. There have been failures in identifying them. Just like an innocent man going to jail is bad both for that man, and also because a criminal remains on the streets, locking up phoney terrorists gives us a misleading view of the world. Plus, who knows what the standard of proof is.
Re:Ironic.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ironic.. (Score:5, Informative)
Pressure? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's really nice (Score:5, Insightful)
We cannot allow ourselves to become the things and people we hate. We cannot become a nation that approves of torture, approves of lawless legal system, a nation that will treat others, no matter how heinous, as they would treat us.
We cannot hope to be a beacon of light in a dark sea by covering ourselves in the same darkness. Either you do the moral thing, or the immoral thing. There is a battle in this country, between those who would have us give up our morality for naught, and those who stand against them.
Re:5 to 4? I'm torn. (Score:5, Informative)
"The game of bait-and-switch that todayâ(TM)s opinion plays upon the Nationâ(TM)s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
"Today the Court warps our Constitution."
"The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today."
PDF [scotusblog.com]
Agreed (Score:4, Informative)
Hard to believe that such a fundamental wrongdoing only gets overturned by a 5 to 4 decision though
That's the horrendously sad part of this ruling. Reminds me of an interview I saw with Scalia saying something about whether torture in questioning a subject could actually be considered "punishment" and hence exempt from the cruel and unusual standard.
I'm sorry, I don't care how engaging he is personally, his beliefs undermine the Constitution and separation of powers. All four of them threaten the very ideals that formerly made America the envy of the world.
Re:Agreed (Score:5, Informative)
Scalia's comments [thinkprogress.org]
Re:Agreed (Score:4, Insightful)
A similar case before the supreme court (Score:5, Interesting)
Then FDR also created the concept of "enemy combatants" for handling people who were spies captured inside the US boarders. While he should have treated them as Spies under war common law, instead he wanted their trials publicly suppressed and created a special tribunal outside the jurisdictions of any state but on US soil. The supremes had to argue about it. The argument was that clearly the US legal system can try people crimes so why not let it. And it would set a bad precedent for removing habeous for people captured outside war zones.
The book "In time of War" [slashdot.org] covers this an it's a great well written read. I recommend it highly.
I thought the following quote captured one aspect of the issue:
"But the real problem is the interminable detention period, which has no reasonable judicial excuse. The dissenters are quite right that America has offered a quite generous set of procedural protections for enemy combatants. But these are mocked when a detainee is an indefinite prisoner with indefinitely incomprehensible status. The problem is not the legal process but what happens when the federal government holds that process, at its whim, in open-ended abeyance. The federal government still gets a lot of leeway, and the benefit of the doubt, from the Court, especially in wartime. But ours is so nonobviously wartime, and the Bush administration has been so lax, opaque, and seemingly quite pointless in its interminable detention of a wide range of variably important prisoners, that todayÂs ruling seems to me to confirm the wisdom of both the majority and the dissent. I suspect the ruling will, if anything, cause most of these detainees to actually be tried, which would be nice, but not released, which would not be. And that strikes me as not only nice but just."
link [ithoughtth...oftheissue]
A good question is where does McCain stand on obeying the Constituional restrictions faithfully. Here's two articles from Reason Magazine (libertarian bent):
Longer [reason.com] and Shorter [reason.com]
Re:How's that for.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Isn't this the same SCOTUS that Bush packed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Troubling decision (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Troubling decision (Score:5, Insightful)
If we behave like Al Qaeda, how can we call ourselves the "good guys"?
Obviously, the procedures for soliers in the field are different from the procedures for dealing with street criminals. How did we deal with war in the past? I'm sure we didn't worry about "due process" with the Nazis, but niether did we hold them indefinitely. Shoot them, try them, or release them.
Re:Troubling decision (Score:5, Insightful)
The consitution says, "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." This specifically states that unless there is rebellion or invasion, the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended. There is no rebellion or invasion in progress, therefore, the federal government, both the executive and legislative branches, has no power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, which is the power of the judicial branch to review any and all detainments, jailings, or imprisonments.
There's nothing in the consitution that states that the executive and legislative branches can operate internationally, but the judicial branches cannot review international actions. The three branches of government are co-equal. I hate this recent distaste for judges by conservatives who want to reinterpret the laws of the land to let their idiot of a president do whatever they want. The judges are doing their duty to interpret the law. The fact that they're not elected by popular vote is BY DESIGN and should not be used to try to make their *co-equal* role seem less important.
The constitution doesn't apply to a particular location. It applies to a particular federal government, regardless of the location. The consitution says, the government cannot restrict habeas corpus, it doesn't say, it cannot restrict habeas corpus on US citizens. Habeas corpus isn't a right of American Citizens defined affirmatively in the consitution, instead, the federal government is prohibited from suspending the right period, with no other conditions. Currently, the government is claiming the power to suspend the right of habeas corpus for the people at gitmo. The constitution says, NO, you cannot suspend that right. Doesn't matter who. Doesn't matter where.
As far as your argument of "will Al Qaeda reciprocate"? Do we decide our standards of behavior by the enemy's standards of behavior? For example, the enemy punishes us by attacking civilians, so why don't we attack civilians aligned with their cause or civilians whom they claim to represent and fight for? Would that be the right thing to do? It's really sad to me that people don't understand the *reason* we're the good guys is the fact that we're willing to fight based on principles, and that Americans have been willing to die for those principles for as long as this nation has existed. Fools who would give up those principles in a heartbeat for security, fools who would disgrace all those who fought and died fighting the right way, when we could have won faster by fighting the wrong way, those people don't understand what it means to be an American. If more Americans have to die to defend the constitutional principles that make us who we are, then at least they die as Americans, rather than reducing themselves to the level of the terrorists. By giving up our principles and violating our constitution, we let the terrorists win, because we let them take away who we are and we let them take away what we believe in.
I prefer to believe that we can beat these people, that we can chase them down and kill them, without violating our principles and without giving up who we are. I'm willing to accept that there is a greater risk that there might be more terrorist attacks, and that my city could be bombed, and that I could lose loved ones in this battle, if it means that we stay true to our American principles and we fight like the good, strong, and moral people that we consider ourselves to be, and I consider anyone who is unwilling to accept the additional risk involved with sticking to our principles to be a coward and to have no claim to patriotism, and have no understanding of what America is and why we're the greatest nation on Earth.
Re:categories, please (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a reason that I believe Bush is the most successful terrorist in the world.