Supreme Court Declares Gitmo Terrorists Have Habeas Rights

The AP reports a stunning ruling by the Supreme Court that treats foriegn terrorists picked up on the battlefield as if they were Americans. The Supreme Court said that those held at the prison in Gauntanomo Bay may challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. The court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the constitutional rights of prisoners. Writing for the majority Justice Anthony Kennedy said that "the laws and constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times." If that cliche was not enough for you he went on to say that "liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law." No, they are apparetnly reconciled in Anthony Kennedy's head, what he thinks should be the law not what the law actually says. The ruling declared that prisoners in the remote US jail in southern Cuba "have the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus." What was once inconcievable, that those picked up in a war zone and held by the United States military have a right to habeus corpus, is now enshrined as constitutional law. According to this logic all Prisoners Of War may one day be able to gain access to American civilian courts. As former Chief of Staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese, the nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin points out: "After all, you would think lawful enemy combatants have a better claim in this regard than unlawful enemy combatants. And if POWs have access to our civilian courts, how do our courts plan to handle the thousands, if not tens of thousands of cases, that will be brought to them in future conflicts?" In the history of this nation, when have we ever allowed access to our court systems to those enemy combatants captured in foreign lands?

The AP wrote that the Supreme Court dealt a "stiff rebuke to the Bush administration." Not everything is about the Bush administration, you stupid journalists. This is a rebuke to the War on IslamoTerror, a complete misunderstanding of the people we are fighting and the completely wrong message to send. The enemy has no respect for legalities or international law. They have no respect even for natural law when a mother can send her children to a suicidal bombing death. We pick these scum up in Iraq or Afghanistan and bring them back here so they can demand Habeus Corpus?! I thought the WOT was not supposed to be a law enforcement operation but a war that we would win at all costs. How can we win a war against the most determined enemy if we are going to treat them with kid gloves when we capture them? What message does this send to our enemies? More litigation and more priveleges for the enemy is not what we need in the War on IslamoTerror.

In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts criticized his colleagues for striking down what he called “the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants.” The dissent pointed out that the majority of Justices in this case intentionally misread law and precedent. They utilized the Eisentrager case. The dissent in that case specifically pointed out that aliens in detention by American forces outside of our own sovereign territory had no right to habeas corpus. How could the majority intentionally misuse a case and distort precedent to apply habeas rights to those in Guantanomo?

Please note that the only Justices on our high court that have their heads screwed on straight are John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. Do we really need a president that is more likely to give us more Ruth Bader Ginsburgs?

The most scathing dissent came from Antonin Scalia who wrote the follwing: "Today the Court warps our Constitution in a way that goes beyond the narrow issue of the reach of the Suspension Clause, invoking judicially brainstormed separation-of-powers principles to establish a manipulable 'functional' test for the extraterritorial reach of habeas corpus (and, no doubt, for the extraterritorial reach of other Constitutional protections as well). It blatantly misdescribes [sic] important precedents, most conspicuously Justice Jackson’s opinion for the Court in Johnson v. Eisentrager. It breaks a chain of precedent as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into detentions of aliens abroad absent statutory authorization. And, most tragically, it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner. The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today. I dissent."

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