Wednesday, May 09, 2007
NYT Starts New Pointless Campaign
It seems like yesterday, but I'm sure it was a half decade ago, that the NYT had about 40 articles about how horrible it was that a male members only golf club (Augusta National Golf Club) could host a major tournament (the Masters). No one cared but the NYT and a handful of feminists.
I'm predicting a new campaign to which our collective response will be a big yawn--the Times will be pushing for a new law granting to federal courts jurisdiction to hear a habeas corpus writ request from a foreign illegal combatant. I'm sighing at the misguided waste of editorial space but soon, if the Times follows its precedent, I'll, like almost all of America, soon be yawning.
The second editorial on the subject this month starts with an idiotic statement:
Last year, Congressional Democrats allowed the Bush administration to ram through one of the worst laws in the nation’s history — the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Worst law in the nation's history? Worse than the ones which were declared unconstitutional? (The Military Commissions Act of 2006 passed constitutional review in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and cert. was denied by the Supreme Court). Worse than the Alien and Sedition Acts? Worse than McCain/Feingold? Smoot/Hawley?
Rewriting the act should start with one simple step: restoring to prisoners of the war on terror the fundamental right to challenge their detention in a real court.
Why? The anti-Nazi, conscripted Wehrmacht soldier captured in Tunis in 1943 was a prisoner of war for the duration, with absolutely no ability to get his case reviewed. He at least wore a uniform and followed most of the recognized rules of war. Why should today's un-uniformed, war criminal Jihadi have more rights than someone who followed the rules? Why should we reward those who target on purpose women and children and have a status similar to pirates--that is, we could execute them upon capture with minimal tribunal involvement? What are they doing that would get them greater rights than a real prisoner of war?
The NYT has nothing.
Suspending habeas corpus is an extreme notion on the radical fringes of democratic philosophy.
What? You mean the well recognized constitutional ability to suspend habeas corpus during times of invasion and civil war (U. S. Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 9)? You mean that extreme part of the radical fringe of the Constitution?
Here's their 'tit for tat' argument: As four retired military chief prosecutors — from the Navy, the Marines and the Army — pointed out to Congress, holding prisoners without access to courts merely feeds Al Qaeda’s propaganda machine, increases the risk to the American military and sets a precedent by which other governments could justify detaining American civilians without charges or appeal.
...feeds Al Qaeda's propaganda machine. Yeah, we know the one thing that really gets the average Jihadi's goat (figuratively) is the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. How much more can they hate us?
...increases the risk to the American military. How? They try to kill us every chance they get. They kill and mutilate every soldier they capture, not necessarily in that order. What greater risk? This is idiotic, or worse, Joe Biden-like.
...sets a precedent by which other governments could justify detaining American civilians without charges or appeal. You mean like our Embassy personnel in Tehran or our citizens kidnapped in Lebanon, and in Iraq? If our citizens fight in another country as un-uniformed, illegal combatants and are captured, it's OK with me for the foreign government to detain them. Same thing if we're at war with that foreign country, because all prisoners of war are held for as long as the war continues.
Then there's the big finale: We are sympathetic to [the Democrats'] concerns about finding a way to revive habeas corpus that won’t die in committee or be subject to a presidential veto of a larger bill. But lawmakers sometimes have to stand on principle and trust the voters to understand.
This is one of those times.
It is because the Democrats do trust the voters that they will do nothing to grant to the undeserving this unprecedented 'right.'
Apparently there are 38 pointless, baseless, absolutely ignored screeds on this subject to go.
I'm predicting a new campaign to which our collective response will be a big yawn--the Times will be pushing for a new law granting to federal courts jurisdiction to hear a habeas corpus writ request from a foreign illegal combatant. I'm sighing at the misguided waste of editorial space but soon, if the Times follows its precedent, I'll, like almost all of America, soon be yawning.
The second editorial on the subject this month starts with an idiotic statement:
Last year, Congressional Democrats allowed the Bush administration to ram through one of the worst laws in the nation’s history — the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Worst law in the nation's history? Worse than the ones which were declared unconstitutional? (The Military Commissions Act of 2006 passed constitutional review in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and cert. was denied by the Supreme Court). Worse than the Alien and Sedition Acts? Worse than McCain/Feingold? Smoot/Hawley?
Rewriting the act should start with one simple step: restoring to prisoners of the war on terror the fundamental right to challenge their detention in a real court.
Why? The anti-Nazi, conscripted Wehrmacht soldier captured in Tunis in 1943 was a prisoner of war for the duration, with absolutely no ability to get his case reviewed. He at least wore a uniform and followed most of the recognized rules of war. Why should today's un-uniformed, war criminal Jihadi have more rights than someone who followed the rules? Why should we reward those who target on purpose women and children and have a status similar to pirates--that is, we could execute them upon capture with minimal tribunal involvement? What are they doing that would get them greater rights than a real prisoner of war?
The NYT has nothing.
Suspending habeas corpus is an extreme notion on the radical fringes of democratic philosophy.
What? You mean the well recognized constitutional ability to suspend habeas corpus during times of invasion and civil war (U. S. Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 9)? You mean that extreme part of the radical fringe of the Constitution?
Here's their 'tit for tat' argument: As four retired military chief prosecutors — from the Navy, the Marines and the Army — pointed out to Congress, holding prisoners without access to courts merely feeds Al Qaeda’s propaganda machine, increases the risk to the American military and sets a precedent by which other governments could justify detaining American civilians without charges or appeal.
...feeds Al Qaeda's propaganda machine. Yeah, we know the one thing that really gets the average Jihadi's goat (figuratively) is the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. How much more can they hate us?
...increases the risk to the American military. How? They try to kill us every chance they get. They kill and mutilate every soldier they capture, not necessarily in that order. What greater risk? This is idiotic, or worse, Joe Biden-like.
...sets a precedent by which other governments could justify detaining American civilians without charges or appeal. You mean like our Embassy personnel in Tehran or our citizens kidnapped in Lebanon, and in Iraq? If our citizens fight in another country as un-uniformed, illegal combatants and are captured, it's OK with me for the foreign government to detain them. Same thing if we're at war with that foreign country, because all prisoners of war are held for as long as the war continues.
Then there's the big finale: We are sympathetic to [the Democrats'] concerns about finding a way to revive habeas corpus that won’t die in committee or be subject to a presidential veto of a larger bill. But lawmakers sometimes have to stand on principle and trust the voters to understand.
This is one of those times.
It is because the Democrats do trust the voters that they will do nothing to grant to the undeserving this unprecedented 'right.'
Apparently there are 38 pointless, baseless, absolutely ignored screeds on this subject to go.
Labels: Habeas Corpus, NYT pointless campaign
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Impeach the President
We need to impeach the president of the Colorado Bar Association, Elizabeth Starrs, for her legal idiocy in today's combined Sunday paper. She wants us to extend the habeas corpus writ to the Islamic illegal combatants captured and held outside the United States. I disagree with Ms. Starrs politically, but that's not what's causing me to write this. You would expect the leader of the bar association to be able to read a statute or a case and understand the central issue. Ms. Starrs, unfortunately, displays a rather stunning inability to do this basic lawyer task.
She writes: In 2004, in Rasul v. Bush the Supreme Court held that our Constitution applies to the detainees in Guantanamo Bay. The case did no such thing. It recognized that there was a statutory grant of jurisdiction contained specifically in 28 U.S.C. Section 2241. In a contemporaneous decision, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court implicitly held that habeas corpus was not a constitutional right for everyone detained by Americans, and that even an American detainee's due process rights to contest the detention were merely to have the question decided before a neutral tribunal (not a federal court).
That's not the end of President Starr's inability to know what she's talking about. She writes that after the Rasul decision: ...Congress tried to circumvent that decision by passing the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Circumvent? The Supreme Court in Rasul held that there was a statutory jurisdiction which allowed the writ so the people's elected representatives, in the House and Senate, voted to take that grant of jurisdiction away. That's how things work under the Constitution. It is only because she is clueless about the very core of the Hamdi and Rasul decisions is she talking about "circumvention." One man's circumvention is another man's representative government at work.
She's not finished: There is no meaningful process to challenge that designation [of "unlawful enemy combatant"]. Yeah, I guess there isn't, if you ignore the process of Combatant Status Review Tribunals and the protections of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, a law Ms. Starrs cited, but apparently hasn't taken the time to read.
She also complains that the prisoners can't obtain a "statement of the charges" against them. What? These are guys we or our allies captured waging war against us; we're not 'charging' them; we're not even punishing them for taking up arms against us; we are merely holding them, as we do with real POWs, so that they don't return to the battlefield (as several released from Gitmo have done) and continue trying to kill us or our allies. Charges? We don't need no stinkin' charges. This woman's a maroon.
She points out that there is current legislation trying to restore habeas corpus rights to the illegal combatants. Yeah, good luck with that. The Democrats have a slim majority now but not near enough to override a veto. She writes: The Colorado Bar Association supports these efforts. No we don't; I'm a member and I don't. She does. She continues: This is not a partisan issue. Of course it is. The bleeding heart core of the left doesn't believe war is being waged against us and wants to treat it as if al Qaeda were merely an international crime syndicate. We right thinking types know war when we see it and we were looking at it during 9/11 et seq.
Wait, there's more; she types: It is true that some personal liberties have been limited in the last five years in the name of national security. Oh yeah? Name one that doesn't involve boarding an airplane.
The U.S. Constitution was established to protect individuals' rights. Yeah, Americans' individual rights or those of people in America. It is not a world government charter. She continues: Those rights mean little if they can be cast aside when the going gets tough. Perhaps Ms. Starr would do well actually to read our Constitution. I would direct her attention to Article I, Section 9 which states: 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. Isn't that casting aside an individual right, the very right she's writing about so poorly, when the going gets tough? And notice it's the 'privilege' to the Writ not the 'right' in the Constitution.
Ms. Starrs writes, just before her big fuzzy thinking finish, that: We are not naive. (Au contraire, I can name one person who is). There are bad guys at Gitmo, but, we also know that some of those being held may not be "enemy combatants." (Emphasis added). What? You know there may? I know that Ms. Starrs may like to set puppies on fire in her spare time, although the probability of that is extremely low. She looks like a very pleasant person in her photo. I'm just pointing out the meaningless of combining the certainty of the word 'know' with the tenuousness of 'may;' the end result is that a sentence employing both words is pure speculation.
OK , this is getting a little long. She writes: Our military personnel on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan...have a right to expect that we will follow the applicable law when we are dealing with these prisoners.
Are we not following the applicable law of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which was held constitutional by the DC Circuit court and the Supreme Court denied cert? Does she mean that applicable law?
I am embarrassed to be represented by a lawyer with this poor of analysis skills. Impeachment. Now. (Just kidding--poor analysis skills is not a high crime or misdemeanor).
She writes: In 2004, in Rasul v. Bush the Supreme Court held that our Constitution applies to the detainees in Guantanamo Bay. The case did no such thing. It recognized that there was a statutory grant of jurisdiction contained specifically in 28 U.S.C. Section 2241. In a contemporaneous decision, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court implicitly held that habeas corpus was not a constitutional right for everyone detained by Americans, and that even an American detainee's due process rights to contest the detention were merely to have the question decided before a neutral tribunal (not a federal court).
That's not the end of President Starr's inability to know what she's talking about. She writes that after the Rasul decision: ...Congress tried to circumvent that decision by passing the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Circumvent? The Supreme Court in Rasul held that there was a statutory jurisdiction which allowed the writ so the people's elected representatives, in the House and Senate, voted to take that grant of jurisdiction away. That's how things work under the Constitution. It is only because she is clueless about the very core of the Hamdi and Rasul decisions is she talking about "circumvention." One man's circumvention is another man's representative government at work.
She's not finished: There is no meaningful process to challenge that designation [of "unlawful enemy combatant"]. Yeah, I guess there isn't, if you ignore the process of Combatant Status Review Tribunals and the protections of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, a law Ms. Starrs cited, but apparently hasn't taken the time to read.
She also complains that the prisoners can't obtain a "statement of the charges" against them. What? These are guys we or our allies captured waging war against us; we're not 'charging' them; we're not even punishing them for taking up arms against us; we are merely holding them, as we do with real POWs, so that they don't return to the battlefield (as several released from Gitmo have done) and continue trying to kill us or our allies. Charges? We don't need no stinkin' charges. This woman's a maroon.
She points out that there is current legislation trying to restore habeas corpus rights to the illegal combatants. Yeah, good luck with that. The Democrats have a slim majority now but not near enough to override a veto. She writes: The Colorado Bar Association supports these efforts. No we don't; I'm a member and I don't. She does. She continues: This is not a partisan issue. Of course it is. The bleeding heart core of the left doesn't believe war is being waged against us and wants to treat it as if al Qaeda were merely an international crime syndicate. We right thinking types know war when we see it and we were looking at it during 9/11 et seq.
Wait, there's more; she types: It is true that some personal liberties have been limited in the last five years in the name of national security. Oh yeah? Name one that doesn't involve boarding an airplane.
The U.S. Constitution was established to protect individuals' rights. Yeah, Americans' individual rights or those of people in America. It is not a world government charter. She continues: Those rights mean little if they can be cast aside when the going gets tough. Perhaps Ms. Starr would do well actually to read our Constitution. I would direct her attention to Article I, Section 9 which states: 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. Isn't that casting aside an individual right, the very right she's writing about so poorly, when the going gets tough? And notice it's the 'privilege' to the Writ not the 'right' in the Constitution.
Ms. Starrs writes, just before her big fuzzy thinking finish, that: We are not naive. (Au contraire, I can name one person who is). There are bad guys at Gitmo, but, we also know that some of those being held may not be "enemy combatants." (Emphasis added). What? You know there may? I know that Ms. Starrs may like to set puppies on fire in her spare time, although the probability of that is extremely low. She looks like a very pleasant person in her photo. I'm just pointing out the meaningless of combining the certainty of the word 'know' with the tenuousness of 'may;' the end result is that a sentence employing both words is pure speculation.
OK , this is getting a little long. She writes: Our military personnel on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan...have a right to expect that we will follow the applicable law when we are dealing with these prisoners.
Are we not following the applicable law of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which was held constitutional by the DC Circuit court and the Supreme Court denied cert? Does she mean that applicable law?
I am embarrassed to be represented by a lawyer with this poor of analysis skills. Impeachment. Now. (Just kidding--poor analysis skills is not a high crime or misdemeanor).
Labels: Habeas Corpus
