This Investor's Business Daily editorial (June 12, thanks to Ruth King) nails today's Gitmo ruling from the Supremes:
Supreme Court: In a historic first, the right to habeas corpus has been bestowed upon prisoners of war — in wartime. Five justices gave terrorists a new weapon to kill more Americans with: our own Constitution.There are many reasons why this year's election may be the most consequential ever, but Thursday's Boumediene v. Bush 5-to-4 decision in the Supreme Court is the most chilling reminder yet of how much our national security is at stake....
The court held that foreign enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. base in Cuba have the right to pursue habeas challenges to their detention in U.S. courts.
It is unprecedented in the history of U.S. law, and for all the soaring rhetoric in Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion that "the laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times," the fact is that Gitmo detainees already had the equivalent of habeas corpus rights.
As Chief Justice John Roberts noted in his dissent, those terrorist POWs enjoy "the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants."
The real issue, according to Roberts, writing also for Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, "is whether the system the political branches designed protects whatever rights the detainees may possess. If so, there is no need for any additional process, whether called 'habeas' or something else."
But it was left to Justice Scalia, in a separate dissent also joined by the other three 'no' votes, to describe Boumediene's disastrous real-world consequences: It "will make the war harder on us," Scalia declared, reading from the bench. "It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
Of detainees already released from Gitmo, Scalia pointed out that one "masterminded the kidnapping of two Chinese dam workers, one of whom was later shot to death when used as a human shield against Pakistani commandoes." Another "promptly resumed his post as a senior Taliban commander and murdered a United Nations engineer and three Afghan soldiers. . . . Still another murdered an Afghan judge." And last month came news that another detainee committed a suicide bombing against Iraqi soldiers in Mosul.
Boumediene will force military attorneys to release evidence against enemy combatants to the terrorists' own lawyers. It will likely see U.S. troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan be called as witnesses. And detainees will have a legal right of access to classified information.
The decision "sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner." He concluded: "The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today."...
I think that is very likely.
Yes, we'll live on, to regret or not.
But for how long?
Bush should place these five justices under arrest (for intruding upon the Commander-in-Chief's war-making authority) and hold them in federal prison for the duration of the war.
There is no point in taking prisoners anymore.
This ruling is not enlightened--it is insane.
TAKE NO MORE PRISONERS. SHOOT TO KILL ONLY.
Hotspur: If you wish to live where the President arrests Supreme Court justices in time of war, there is a country where that's done. It is called Pakistan.
The answer to jihad is not for us to give up our freedoms or values. The answer to jihad is not to become fascist.
The answer to jihad is to respect the Muslims' concept of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. They can live in Dar al-Islam, living under sharia. We can live in Dar al-Harb, living under the U.S. Constitution.
We should keep our freedoms. We should keep our values.
The "youths" in Guantanamo Bay are not "us". They are not from our country, they do not share our values, they are not "just like us". They have done nothing to deserve our freedoms and our protections; they have done everything to deserve a summary execution when captured, according to the Geneva Convention.
The question is not whether we should give them a hearing in a civilian court or not; the question is whether they should have been taken prisoner in the first place. If they are not part of a national army, if they are not uniformed combatants, if they are members of a group that tortures and murders civilians and POW's and that uses children as soldiers, they should not be put in protective custody of the U.S. government and given all the rights and protections that U.S. citizens enjoy. For the past 200 years, U.S. servicemen fought and died to protect those rights, and now in our psychotic benevolence we are bestowing those rights on the very people who are fighting tooth and nail to destroy those very rights.
We are affording Geneva Convention protection to people who have broken almost every single clause of the Geneva Convention.
Something is seriously wrong.
The 5 should be impeached, which of course the Marxist-democrats in the Senate will never do. The 5 have a long record of helping to implement the Marxist objective of destroying Western Civilization, and the M-dems will want to keep them there for that.
When Roberts was being confirmed he made a pitch for limiting SC judges to 20 years. Would that require an amendment or just a law?
It would also be desirable to take this out of the hands of the Executive and Senate and change it to national elections for judges at the time of the presidential election. Make them tell us how they are going to interpret the constitution.
Just spouting off; it will never happen.
But how long can the republic survive with this sort of thing going on?
Popeye is right. Our troops will now be more likely to shoot all Taliban prisoner because of this ruling. We did the same with the SS troopers in WW2. Good.
Much has been written here at Jihadwatch.org about properly identifying just who our enemy is in this war. It is high time Americans finally admit to themselves that people who think like those five "justices" are just as much our enemy as the jihadists. How dare they wrap themselves in the title "Justice" This decision is just another step in the long march of leftist/liberal/loony groupthink called social justice. A concept of "justice" that is like putty, which can fashion the Constitution into anything from a death warrant for the unborn to a suicide pact for the rest of us. How many people here feel that America and Americans were make more safe by their government as a result of this decision?
A sad day indeed when five leftist fools are able to derail the successful track of a great country.
The names of the five fools should be published and vilified.
These five not only create law, but create bad law.
And while at it the names of those fool California Supreme justices who granted legal marriage to homosexuals should also be widely published so they too can be vilified.
'Fools to the left of me, clowns to the right, here one is, stuck in the middle with you.'
The emperor has no clothes.
The priest of power dressed in their black robes and powdered wigs, should be removed. One way to do this is stop awarding them life long, good paying jobs, making controversial or damaging decisions.
Power for life always turns into despotism. What other gov jobs are awarded life tenure?
That's what we are witnessing, democracy turning into despotism, and we are supposed to be content with this? Throw the bums out, stop rewarding damaging behavior. These are not gods, they have no power other than the black robe. Take the robe away and you have a naked judge...A judicial nudist.
This ruling will make taking prisoners a thing of the past, and will lead to more secret questioning of those thought to have vital information.
This is bum law made by black robed bums...
"All enemies... Foreign AND DOMESTIC" time to start defending, honoring the sworn oath imposed by the United States Government upon all who serve. There are certainly Domestic enemies every bit as dangerous to the security of this Nation as any non domestic threat, in fact greater.
President bush should try to circumvent this foolish ruling while striving to pass a constitutional amendment and/or new laws. The Supreme Court is only one of three independent branches of our Gov. and not an all-powerful reign of philosopher kings ruling over the USA. Pres. Bush, if he had the brains, which it seems he doesn’t, should know this and that it is his ultimate responsibility as President to protect US citizens in time of war, Supreme Court rulings or no, in the case of dangerous enemy combatants determined so by military courts.