A Ruling for Justice

[cal04]

For years, President Bush has made the grandiose claim that the Congressional authorization to attack Afghanistan after 9/11 was a declaration of a “war on terror” that gave him the power to decide who the combatants are and throw them into military prisons forever.

Yesterday, in a powerful 2-to-1 decision, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit utterly rejected the president’s claims. The majority made clear how threatening the administration’s policies are to the Constitution and the rule of law — and how far the administration has already gone down that treacherous road.

Mr. Bush, the majority said, does not claim these powers for dire emergencies but “maintains that the authority to order the military to seize and detain certain civilians is an inherent power of the presidency, which he and his successors may exercise as they please.”

(snip)

This ruling is another strong argument for bringing Mr. Bush’s detention camps under the rule of law. Congress can do that by repealing the odious Military Commissions Act of 2006, which endorsed Mr. Bush’s twisted system of indefinite detentions, by closing Guantánamo Bay and by allowing the courts to sort out the prisoners — not according to the whims of one president with an obvious disdain for the balance of powers but by the rules of justice that have guided this nation for more than 200 years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/opinion/12tue1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[uberllama42]

1. "The President cannot eliminate Constitutional protections with the stroke of a pen

by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention," according to Judge Motz.

Well thank you, Captain Obvious. Where did you study Con Law? That's where I want to go. It's shameful that the judicial branch hasn't done something like this sooner. What happenened to strict-constructionism? This administration and its appointees clearly have an ideologically contrived reading of the Constitution.