Thursday, June 29, 2006

Binnie wins another round

Before the Supreme Court. Just damn!
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18 comments:

The Darkroom said...

I am sick and tired of these activist pinko-commie-terror-loving justices.

6/29/2006 2:40 PM
Tecumseh said...

Right. We need more justices like Thomas, who wrote in his dissent,

the ruling would "sorely hamper the president's ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy."

But that's precisely what the NYT & Co are doing, relentlessly. Do they have any other goal in mind except sucking up to Binnie?

6/29/2006 2:54 PM
The Darkroom said...

with a name like kennedy, what do you expect - he's probably on AQ payroll !

6/29/2006 5:35 PM
Tecumseh said...

Ah, but this is all due to another Kennedy. I still remember when Reagan nominated the best possible jurist for the Supreme Court -- Robert Bork -- only to have the Sire of Chappaquiddick torpedo him, in an utterly disgusting and unfair way. I still think of the borking of Robert Bork as the single most despicable vote of the Senate in the past 25 years. At any rate, as a result, Reagan backpedalled, settling for the non-descript Anthony Kennedy, who, sure enough, has moved steadily towards the Pinko Left ever since (joined in the meantime by Souter, the biggest mistake of Bush Père).

At any rate, with Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito, the Reagan-Bush legacy is taking better shape, slowly overcoming those two stupidities. In the meantime, we still have to suffer from such votes as this one.

6/29/2006 7:13 PM
The Darkroom said...

Agreed on Robert Bork - it was high time we had a justice question the wisdom of science and inject a little evolution in the classroom. This is a democracy after all and if a majority of americans believe the moon is made of swiss cheese, I expect our justices to to encourage the teaching of the majority to our children.

6/29/2006 8:02 PM
Tecumseh said...

You mean, the Left torpedoed Robert Bork because he "questioned the wisdom of science"?

First of all, I am at loss as to what this refers -- is there a reference to this claim?

And second, even if one were to "question the wisdom of science", so what? Is this the religious test of the Left? Any such question is anathema to Marxist dogma, I guess. Very democratic, and in the spirit of the Constitution, heh? No, wait, burning the flag is the great thing to do, that will win you favor with the Bierkenstock set -- that, and sabotaging the war on Terror.

6/29/2006 8:50 PM
Tecumseh said...

A reaction to the Supreme Court decision from ARMY SGT 1ST CLASS LAYNE MORRIS, who helped capture Omar Khadr:

"I'm disappointed because I think it's justice delayed. I think in the long run it's going to end up having the effect of all those people spending more time in Guantanamo, which I have absolutely no problem with."

- Sgt Morris was blinded in the right eye by shrapnel during the firefight and agreed to testify against Khadr.

6/29/2006 9:39 PM
The Darkroom said...

>>A reaction to the Supreme Court decision from ARMY SGT 1ST CLASS LAYNE MORRIS, who helped capture Omar Khadr:

How is Sargeant Morris's opinion relevant ?

6/29/2006 9:41 PM
Tecumseh said...

Click on the links provided, and you'll see.

6/29/2006 9:51 PM
The Darkroom said...

I misread an article

BR: Do you feel like your record on civil rights was distorted?

RHB: I didn't have a record on civil rights. [laughter] Prior to becoming a judge I was an antitrust lawyer and a law professor. As a judge there were cases in which I ruled in favor of minorities and cases where I didn't. But this notion that I wanted to turn back the clock and that I was in favor of segregation was nonsense. I've always believed that segregation and discrimination are unconstitutional. And this business about not being able to teach evolution in public schools, where the hell that came from I don't know. I happen to think that evolution is a scientific fact. So, yes, my views were badly distorted.

6/29/2006 9:56 PM
The Darkroom said...

>>Click on the links provided, and you'll see.

I actually did...

6/29/2006 10:21 PM
The Darkroom said...

>Sgt Morris was blinded in the right eye by shrapnel during the firefight and agreed to testify against Khadr.

I still fail to see how that makes him an expert at understanding consitutional matters.

6/29/2006 10:37 PM
Tecumseh said...

Who said he's an "expert in constitutional matters"? He's just a Joe Shmoe, who happened to take arms in defense of the US of A, and got shot in the eye by some AQ guy who's now in the slammer at Gitmo. Sgt Morris is not getting mad, he (and the widow of his buddy, who was killed by said AQ poster boy for the ACLU) is suing the pants off the AQ. Good for them--I hope he wins his case, and collects the money. So what makes him relevant is that the AQ boy is one of 10 defendants at Gitmo, who was scheduled to face justice before a Military Tribunal, with Sgt Morris as witness for the prosecution. Now the Supreme Court has decided the AQ killer will not face justice. Sgt Morris is rightly pissed. I'm with him.

6/29/2006 11:53 PM
The Darkroom said...

The bigger picture is that the military tribunals violate the GC. Voiding such a kangaroo court is more important than placating sgt morris

6/30/2006 5:36 AM
Tecumseh said...

Violate the GC? Kangaroo court? I don't agree with those interpretations. Yes, some Justices said that, but it doesn't necessarily make it so.

Moreover, it's not a question of "placating" Sgt Morris. Rather, or having justice done. Those AQ guys took arms against the United States, without donning uniform, or obeying any of the provisions of the GC. They should pay the price.

But, as usual, the Liberals side with criminals and with our enemies, hiding behind high-fallutin appeals to morality. BS.

6/30/2006 9:20 AM
The Darkroom said...

As i understand it, the court ruled htat the military tribunals violated US & int's law. ain't that the definition of a kangaroo court ?

6/30/2006 9:27 AM
Tecumseh said...

The Supreme Court only interprets US law -- it has no mandate to interpret international law, as far as I can tell from the Constitution.
Only Liberals (and one-worlders) think international law should (or could) take precedence over US law, when it comes to internal matters. But what do you expect?

As for military tribunals "violating US law", there is no such thing that I can discern in the opinion. What law would that be? If one makes such an assertion, the alleged law should be quoted, otherwise, the assertion is meaningless.

6/30/2006 11:55 AM
Tecumseh said...

Taranto sees it pretty much like Sgt Morris, though he takes the lawyerly route to reach basically the same conclusion.


The Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (link above in HTML or here in PDF) weighs in at 185 pages, and we'll confess we haven't had time to read every word. But here are the major points:

Although Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the court's primary opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy decided the case. Kennedy joined Stevens and the three other "liberal" justices in some aspects of the case, yielding a 5-3 majority, but declined to join others, producing an inconclusive result on those issues. (Because Chief Justice John Roberts joined the lower-court decision the Supreme Court was overturning, he did not participate in today's ruling but can be assumed to agree with the three dissenters.)

The Kennedy majority agreed that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which grants the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sole jurisdiction over habeas corpus petitions filed by Guantanamo detainees, does not strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction in this case, because Hamdan had already filed for the writ when Congress passed the act.

The Kennedy majority held that the military commission the Pentagon set up to try Hamdan was not authorized by the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The Stevens plurality wanted to go further and hold that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions--which provides that war crimes trials be conducted by "a regularly constituted court"--requires that Hamdan be present at his trial, even if sensitive intelligence is being aired. But Kennedy thought it unnecessary to reach a conclusion on this question.

The Stevens plurality also wanted to declare the charge against Hamdan--conspiracy--invalid under international law. Kennedy again saw no reason to reach the question.
The court did not decide that unlawful combatants at Guantanamo are entitled to Geneva Convention protections as either civilians or prisoners of war, only that Common Article 3, which governs "conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the [signatories]," applies--though because of Kennedy's demurral, precisely how it applies is an open question.

(In dissent, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas argued that Common Article 3 does not apply to the conflict with al Qaeda--a position Roberts also took in the lower court's decision [PDF]. Scalia and Thomas, along with Justice Samuel Alito, also take the position that even if Common Article 3 does apply, the commission qualified as "regularly constituted.")

The court also did not hold that the government is under any obligation to release Hamdan. Justice Stevens:

We have assumed . . . the truth of the message implicit in that charge--viz., that Hamdan is a dangerous individual whose beliefs, if acted upon, would cause great harm and even death to innocent civilians, and who would act upon those beliefs if given the opportunity. It bears emphasizing that Hamdan does not challenge, and we do not today address, the Government's power to detain him for the duration of active hostilities in order to prevent such harm.

For now at least, the court has not mandated that terrorist detainees be granted the rights of either ordinary criminal defendants (who cannot be held indefinitely unless charged and convicted) or prisoners of war (who, among other things, cannot be interrogated).

The chief result of this ruling will be to delay the trials of Guantanamo detainees until Congress or the Pentagon establishes a regime of military commissions that meets the court's approval. For those concerned with the duration of terrorists' captivity--a perverse thing to worry about anyway--there's little to cheer here.

If all the Gitmo detainees were released out on the Street, there would be ullulating in Cambridge and Berkeley, that's for sure. But that's not gonna happen, not as long as Jean Francois Kerry or a look alike is not President.

6/30/2006 2:38 PM

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