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|6.30.04 @ 7:00AM|#
All you need to know about Rasul and Hamdi, is this:
1. The President can classify anybody he wants as an enemy combatant - including American citizens - with only minimal due process. In fact, administrative due process is probably plenty. (Hamdi).
2. Anybody held by the U.S. military has as much or more right to contest their detention as U.S. citizens; and they are free to bring tort suits against the U.S. government for injuries suffered in the hostilities. (Rasul).
Yeah, this is a great friggin' free country, where our citizens are free to be locked up on the sole judgement of the executive branch; while our enemies are free to sue our Army to get it to stop attacking them.
Human Rights Watch and the ACLU are cheering; I fear they've completely missed the boat on the Hamdi case. It is a dangerous, bad decision; so will Padilla be on remand, as a result of the ruling in Hamdi.
Scalia's Hamdi and Rasul dissents, and Stevens' Padilla dissents are both spot on. The only thing is, it isn't the executive branch that is inverting the Constitution and our common law protections: it's the Court.
The sole consolation to this jurisprudence of expedience, which will no doubt enable people who think steakknife beheadings are the height of style, is that when Al Qaida finally does manage to splash the Capitol Building, they will probably take out the S. Ct. as collateral damage, due to its location adjacent to the Capitol. I will greatly miss the architecture on the facade of that building...
drf|6.30.04 @ 7:28AM|#
yup - let's lock em all up, to hell with the constitution. can't have any potential terrorists (= free towel heads) out there. get rid of all of em i say. yup. no constitution necessary. why apu should get locked up, too. ya never know.
rend mig.
|7.1.04 @ 1:54AM|#
Kudos and much gratitude to the founders of our Republic for codifying these liberties in our Constitution, and also for setting up a divided government with a judiciary sporting elements of independence that can act as a safe guard when the government over reacts as it has post 9/11.
|7.1.04 @ 11:02AM|#
So tell me again why Bush doesn't just decide that Kerry is an "enemy combatant" and lock him up until after the election? Because the American people wouldn't stand for it and would vote him out of office? No problem! During a time of war, the president can suspend elections (and since the Republicans control everything, they could make that forever).
Of course it won't happen. But it's darkly funny as hell that it even could.