"Lawless enclave"

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Congress? Good guess, but think cigars. No, not the Clinton White House. The Supreme Court looks to be split on Gitmo.

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Jeff Taylor is a contributing editor at Reason.

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  1. jon
    April.20.2004 at 8:37 am

    I love where the Solicitor General said the base is under Cuban sovereignty. Has anyone told Fidel?

  2. user
    April.20.2004 at 11:24 am

    I can’t help thinking that if you have to argue your position in such a dishonest manner, you are wrong.

  3. Don
    April.21.2004 at 7:12 am

    Yeah. My guess is those ex-Taliban and al Quada fighters will form the nexus of W’s army, which will invade if he is unable to repeat his 2000 election theft.

  4. garym
    April.21.2004 at 7:24 am

    jon: That is amazing. Based on that quote, Olson is apparently claiming that the US turned a bunch of POW’s over to Cuba. Surely that violates some international law?

  5. Kevin Carson
    April.21.2004 at 10:05 am

    Allowing a president to maintain a foreign enclave in which he is beyond the control of other branches of government is a threat to our liberties here at home.

    Remember that Caesar used Gaul as a base to launch his march across the Rubicon.

    And one of the Whig grievances against James II that led to the Glorious Revolution was the fact that his Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland had built up a large standing army, and threatened to use it to suppress the opposition in England.

  6. Stephen Fetchet
    April.22.2004 at 11:27 am

    The Navy rents Gitmo from Cuba through a lease of indefinite duration. The U.S. doesn’t own Gitmo any more than you own the crib you rent from your landlord.

    Under U.S. law, if the U.S. doesn’t own it, ithe U.S. doesn’t have sovereignty over it, and the U.S. courts can’t reach it.

    The alternative that you knuckleheads appear to be urging is that possession is 10/10ths of the law. This would be a great rule, until you realized that the FBI could arrest French anti-war protestors for throwing eggs at the U.S. embassy in Paris. For that matter, if we accept notions of universal jurisdiction, it would mean that a court in Brussels could put you on trial for practicing capitalism, or any other trumped up charge they cared to issue, if they felt like it.

    You really believe in universal court jurisdiction, guys? Or would you rather stick with traditional notions of territorial limits on court jurisdiction?

  7. humidors
    April.25.2004 at 10:01 am

    Yep that’s washington for you. Those guys being held in GITMO probably know Fidel. They may even have humidors full of his cigars, as he has participated in training some of those guys in Iraq. This time he is not boasting about it because he sees that we are serious…and most importantly…pissed.

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