Ex-Judges: Detainee Law Unconstitutional

[DoYouEverWonder]

November 2, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Seven retired federal judges from both political parties have joined dozens of Guantanamo Bay detainees in urging an appeals court to declare key parts of President Bush's new anti-terrorism law unconstitutional.

The judges, in a rare court filing Wednesday, said stripping courts of the right to question how the military handles terrorism suspects "challenges the integrity of our judicial system" and effectively sanctions the use of torture.

Bush signed a law this month allowing the military to arrest people overseas and detain them indefinitely without allowing them to use the U.S. courts to contest their detention. Bush hailed the law, which established a system of military trials, as a crucial tool in the war on terrorism and said it would allow prosecution of several high-level terror suspects.

For detainees challenging their imprisonment, the law locks them out of the civilian court system. Dozens of detainees argued Wednesday that the law is unconstitutional, and the retired judges echoed that in their own papers filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-detainees-lawsuits,0,1054841.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[NOLADEM]

1. What's a Constitution? (did I spell that right?)

:shrug:

[indepat]

2. A Constitution is something this once-Republic once had before it was shredded

by the Congress and the President, all who took oaths of office swearing to uphold, protect, and defend it: surely we all know what that makes each of them who participated in the shredding.

Edited

[Katzenjammer]

3. Commander Gordon needs to be stripped of his commission

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon, defended the new law and said that terror suspects were being given their day in court.

"As a responsible democracy, we have an obligation to protect our citizens and those of our allies," Gordon said. "Holding unlawful enemy combatants captured during the war on terror is essential to preventing their return to the battlefield while collecting valuable intelligence in order to avert terror attacks like those seen on 9/11 and in cities around the world."

After WW2 they hanged people who did what he's doing here.

[TechBear_Seattle]

5. Isn't it treason for a military officer to violate his oaths?

Specifically, the one about protecting and defending the Constitution?

[Katzenjammer]

7. Good question! It's certainly a crime, but which crime I don't know.

If it's not treason, maybe it should be?

[TechBear_Seattle]

8. Interesting idea for a novel

Suppose the Repugs, though outright theft, keep control of all three branches of government. A US general, holding to his oaths to protect and defend the Constitution, incites a military coup. They overthrow the US government, create emergency laws to prevent election irregularities, hold new elections, restore the Constitution and immediately surrender to the new government as traitors for having used military office to incite insurrection. They are duly convicted. After a suitable couple of months, the new President gives pardons the rank-and-file soldiers who participated in the coup and gives clemency that amounts to honorable imprisonment for the leaders. Democracy and the rule of law have been restored.

Ok. But what about the precedent of the military as final arbiter of whether or not the government is legitimate? How long until the military rises up to do this again? What if the next time, the coup is led by people who don't want to restore the Constitution?

I see some interesting story possibilities.

[Katzenjammer]

10. Nice one! Are you going to write it?

The ethical dilemma is a stunning one.

[TechBear_Seattle]

11. Eventually, maybe

I'm working on a science fiction novel right now. If I can get that sold, it will probably obligate me to do more science fiction. I can see this idea as part of the back history, but it will be a while before I can develop it as its own story.

[OneAngryDemocrat]

4. Our Mission

I really can not understand the mentality begind these people, unless... unless they honestly believe that they are MORALLY superior to Muslim Arabs (and everyone else for that matter).

People do NOT debate with their moral inferiors: would you discuss child labor laws with a man you KNEW to be a child molestor?

No. These so-called Republicans view all Muslims in the same light as they view sex offenders - fear and loathing.

People do NOT deal, one-on-one, with their moral inferiors, either: would you attempt to sell the merits of having a savings account, versus not having one, with a known embezzler?

No. These so-called Republicans view all Arabs in the same light as they view criminals - distrust and contempt.

You know they do.

Anyone who doesn't buy into their hate, is condemned as coddling the molestor Muslims, or the criminal Arabs.

You know its true, truth-seekers.

Here's an anecdote that has stayed with me, since I read it in a WWII book, back in my college days:

Late in the spring of 1945, a German POW asked his American captor, ''Why are you Americans STILL fighting us Germans? You've liberated France, you've liberated Belgium, and Holland. Why not JOIN us Germans, and fight the Bolshevik Russians, by our side?''

Aware of what was found at the first of the concentration camps liberated in the war, the American answered his German prisoner: "You Germans think you are superior to everyone else on earth. You actually believe in the German Super-man. We fight you Germans, today, to liberate YOU from the idea that you are better than everyone else."

On November 7th, we need to liberate America from the Republican idea that we are better than everyone else.

God help us in our endeavours.

Please visit my anti-war website, www.shockedandawful.com

[Demeter]

6. Actually, They Send Money and Contracts to Sex Offenders

until one or both of them get caught.

[The Stranger]

9. Why don't you post this as a thread in General Discussion.

Best post I've ever read on DU.

[OneAngryDemocrat]

12. :)

Thank you.

[OneAngryDemocrat]

18. Shrugging, with stupid look on face...

I followed your suggestion, but got ZERO feedback on the thread.

Oh well.

LOL!!!

[Katzenjammer]

13. That anecdote reminds me of a tidbit from "They Thought They Were Free"

At a scuffle in Frankfurt in 1952, police arrested a group of legbreakers from the "technical service" of the Bund Deutscher Jugend (League of German Youth). The speciality of this "technical service" was attacking Communist, Social Democratic, and neutralist meetings. After police had finished their investigation, Hessian Ministerpräsident Zinn announced that the police had determined that the BDJ had been created and was being trained and financed by the USA, and the "technical service" was composed of some large number (1000-2000) of former Wehrmacht and SS officers who were anything up to a not-very-youthful 35 years old.

Ministerpräsident Zinn, a Social Democrat, really enjoyed the fact that a key purpose of this US-sponsored fascist "technical service" would be to react to any Soviet invasion by assassinating the entire leadership of the Social Democratic Party (including the only Jew in the German government).

[OneAngryDemocrat]

15. Always there...

The hate-mongers will never disappear.

Never.

They'll just go hide for a few years, until they feel the time is ripe for their politics of hate, again.

A Democratic victory on November 7th will merely make them slink back into the shadows.

I can be satisfied with that.

Please visit my anti-war website, www.shockedandawful.com

[Katzenjammer]

16. Not even necessarily slink back into the shadows. Note who was in charge of the US

beween 1945 and 1952, when this fascist terrorist group was unmasked.

[OneAngryDemocrat]

17. I won't...

I won't attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

I will say that while the Democratic Party's history of civil rights abuses during the 20th Century was mostly staqined black, it ended on a very bright note.

Can the same be said for the GOP?

Every generation of civil rights champions has contested the laws of their time.

That, naturally, stands them up against the authorities of their generation, and, usually, the people of that same generation who put those authorities in power.

Bit, by bit, inch by inch.

Liberty is an ongoing process.

[gratuitous]

14. Well OF COURSE it's unconstitutional

But who will have standing to challenge the law? People on whom the law is inflicted don't have the right to go to court, and if you haven't been prosecuted under the law, you haven't sustained a loss or abridgement of your rights that would give you standing to bring a case.

The judges can whine about it all they want, but the jurisdictional questions -- thanks to the "reserve" practiced by our friends in the "strict constructionist" camp -- trump every other consideration in today's judicial climate, and no court can take the case challenging the constitutionality.

[JudyM]

19. Uh-oh! Activist ex-judges. Aligned with terrorists. nt

[OneAngryDemocrat]

20. The Math

Do the math:

''Activist'' Judges + Trial Lawyers = JUDICIAL BRANCH

The GOP holds in contempt 1/3 of our Constitutional Republic.

'nuff said.

Please visit my anti-war website, www.shockedandawful.com

[Hissyspit]

21. K&R n/t