The reason why Kidrock and many Americans say what they are saying, is because they are the current masters of the world.

Like Rome and the British before us, they believe they have the right to do anything, wherever they want, whenever they want...

I find it weird how America says it is spreading democracy around the world by invading nations. It reminds of how the Romans like Julius Caesar said they conquered Gaul and Britain to civilize them. How Alexander the Great said he wanted to spread the virtues of Greek culture to the entire world. How Genghis Khan wanted to spread Mongol culture to all of Asia.

They are even more short-sided and obtuse than that. They've enabled, supported, and defended near dictatorial powers of the executive branch, apparently under the belief that Bush or a Republican will be president forever. Even after the 2006 election, they forget that power can change hands just like that, and the same power to spy on Americans or lock them up without any rights that they view today as necessary to fight the war on the "terrists", they will regard as dangerously totalitarian under a President Obama.

These people are without shame or principle.

Do you ever find that your attributions of other's motive's are often simplistic at best and cartoonish at worst (and most often)?
Why do you place "terrorists" in quotations?

You finally nailed it, Manny. The reason me, and other's, have regarded this decesion granting, for the first time, habeas corpus rights on unlawful enemy combatants, is because we are "the current masters of the world" and has nothing to do with reading the U.S. Constitution.

May I ask why you used an ellipsis in your second paragraph? I guess you want us to infer something, but I can't fathom what that is because you later you use relatively benign imperialists that greatly benefited mankind. Greece, Rome, and Britain.

Habeas corpus also doesn't apply to houseplants, either, by the way.

If George W Bush claims that the people in Gitmo are houseplants, would you believe him?

Apparently you think that all the President has to do is say, without any proof or justification whatsoever, that the people in custody were "unlawful enemy combatants" and poof! The issue is solved. No oversight at all, no one asking any questions, the President might as well be a dictator.

It is indeed a travesty of the intent of the founding fathers, and the exact opposite of what our country is supposed to stand for.

Yep. Exactly.

I put it in quotes because I spelled it the way your party's leader pronunces it and I didn't want it to look like I'd simply misspelled it.

And the motivation of fighting terrorism that I attributed for your support and enabling of the executive branch's near dictatorial powers, like torture (which you support), wire-tapping and spying on Americans, and holding detainees indefinitely in violation of their habeas corpus rights is not exactly news. Unless maybe you have some other motivation for your support of the president's unprecedented abuses of international law and the Constitution that I don't know about.

You forget, there is another branch of government, the Legislative, that also agrees with the policies that were in place before the Court's ruling. Oh yes, so did the court, until last week. You act like the president is acting without constitutional authorization and against he will of the Legislative branch, ala Youngstown Steel, but he is not. He is acting within his power and with the backing of the Legislature.

I agree, COMPLETELY, that detainees need a method to challenge their detainment status. I believe that the Military Commission Act of 2006 fulfilled that (oh, and it was drafted with the courts Hamdan ruling in mind).

My disagreement is with the Court's assertion that the Constitution compels the detainees to be given redress in federal court.

As to your inanity regarding houseplants, I will leave that be.

You could use that exact same argument for the denial of habeas corpus to American citizens in the Hamdi case. And yet you SUPPOSEDLY agreed with the court on that case. You're now using an argument that wasn't adequate to convince yourself in the Hamdi case to try and convince us in this case.



So let me get this straight. If the president and the legislature agree on a law, no matter what it does, then that's good enough for you? No oversight, no checks and balances, no role for the courts at all.

One has to imagine that you wonder why we even HAVE a third branch of government if their role is to simply lay down and capitulate to the executive and legislative branches no matter how the laws they pass might violate the Constitution.

No wonder Clarence Thomas is your favorite justice as there is no level of power he believes is too great for the executive branch to wield. He was, after all, the lone dissenter in the Hamdi case, siding entirely with the Bush administration in denying habeas corpus rights to American citizens.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/n ... ain15.html

This article certainly convinces me that there should be no habeas corpus in Gitmo.

I told you earlier this week that I sided with the Scalia/Steven's wing of the court in the Hamdi case.

Beeble, I could reverse that question and pose it back to you. One wonder's why you think we even need two elected branches of government. Perhaps only to nominate judges who tell us what to do and what not to do.

I actually do like the Judiciary; when they are interpreting laws passed by the elected branches or when they are interpreting the Constitution. Where I have issues with that branch is when it seeks to impinge on the other branches in area's where it has no Constitutional role. Can you point to me where in the Constitution it says that enemy combatants are to be given habeas corpus rights in Federal court?

Here's how I view the court's job:
1) Does the statute/act have a legitimate end? This has to be tied to an express power in the Constitution.

2) Are the means chosen by Congress proper? This just means the Constitution cannot prohibit the act.

Looking at that criteria, which leaves the necessity of a law to Congress, I find that this decesion was improper for the Court to rear its head in.

Yup. And as I stated above, your supposed support of that decision flies in the face of YOUR OWN argument that the executive and legislature passing a law make it ipso facto Constitutional.

If you don't even buy your own argument, why should I?



You could, and I would say that the court is there to balance the legislature and the executive branches when they pass laws that don't meet Constitutional muster. Otherwise they can and do stay out of it.

That would be markedly different from YOUR argument that the simple fact that the executive and legislative branches passed the law means that the court cannot intervene.



"The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."

Can you point me to me where the Constitution applies only to US citizens within the borders of the US?

Article IV Sec. 3



14th Amendment Sec. 1



Might I also add that the 14th Amendment bound the Bill of Rights to the states (I do realize that Habeas is found in the non-amended Constitution). Before that they could do as they pleased unless their own state constitution's held otherwise. If the founder's regarded state's as not being bound by the Bill of Rights, why would you think that they would think we owe habeas corpus rights on alien enemy combatants captured in foreign areas?

Aside from not providing what I asked for about the Constitution only applying to US citizens within US borders, this article, ironically enough, undermines your argument that the Constitution does not apply to US property - which Gitmo unquestionably falls under. If the US controls US property by Constitutional edict, and the writ of habeas corpus shall not be denied barring civil war or invasion, then the writ applies to US property as well as US territory.



This is a non sequitor argument. Habeas corpus is not in the Bill Of Rights. So their views regarding the bill of rights is irrelevant. It's also a diversion since the location of where the combatants are captured is not the issue. What is relevant is that they are being held on US soil.

Your entire argument thus far is based on this kind faulty logic and intellectual dishonesty; but what other way, frankly, is there to justify your view on the denial of basic human rights to detainees?

I fail to see the irony, only that, like normal, you failed to read the section. That section gives Congress the power to make all "needful rules and regulations respecting the territory." The territory itself is not a state so the 14th Amendment need does not apply and if it is not a state then it is a territory/property of the U.S. and as such the Congress has the ability to make all "needful rules and regulations" about that territory, which would seem to include the ability to have or not have habeas corpus.

If alien enemy combatants are due habeas corpus, why are they not also give jury trials or perhaps Miranda rights? The simple fact that you will not admit that the Constitution was never intended to apply to foreigners, especially those we are fighting a war against, seems to be the same sort of intellectual dishonesty you are constantly railing against.

As to the Bill of Rights, I mentioned it to point out that it seems entirely unlikely that the same founders wanted the bill of rights to not apply to states, but they did want it to apply to enemies captured on foreign soil.

Yes, the Congress can create rules and regulations for its territories. No shit, sherlock. But the assertion that this grants it the power to do ANYTHING IT WANTS is utterly and absolutely retardedly fucking stupid. In fact, the Constitution itself places restrictions on what the Congress can and can't do:

"The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."

The Constitution both grants and restricts rights of the Congress and other branches of government, yes? Read that part again about habeas corpus. The privilege of habeas corpurs SHALL NOT BE SUSPENDED. That line, which stands out all by its lonesome, restricts the Congress from suspending habeas corpus. It grants an exemption in very specific cases. It is a unique and fundamental right apart from the Bill of Rights.

But that's exactly what the Congress did. They suspended it. And the courts rightly overturned it.

And frankly, what's done is done. The only reason to continue with this back and forth as far as I'm concerned is to expose your seemingly bottomless support and enabling of this administration's torture, abuses, and endless detention of detainees, whether they be innocent or guilty. And I've done that. So far you haven't convinced anyone that these dictatorial powers of the government to torture and detain combatants forever are a good idea and you're not likely to.

So? The purpose of the courts is to prevent the majority from trampling the rights of the minority. Are you against that as well?



No, actually, this decision is consistent with precedent going back all the way from when Lincoln tried to suspend Habeas Corpus during the civil war and was told by the Court he couldn't do it. And there have been three decisions concerning Bush's holding of prisoners in the last few years and Bush has lost each one. If the Court had decided the way you wanted, THAT would have been the unusual (and wrong) decision.



Yes! You've got it. Absolutely right. He certainly is. BUT THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT CONSTITUTIONAL. Sorry, had to use caps because so far you have failed to understand that point.



That Act basically was a way for Bush to make new Courts that are unanswerable to the Constitution as a way to get AROUND Hamden, not abide by it.

I wonder what a true conservative (as opposed to a blind Bush loyalist) thinks about this. Let's ask George Will:

The day after the Supreme Court ruled that detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo are entitled to seek habeas corpus hearings, John McCain called it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country." Well.

Does it rank with Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), which concocted a constitutional right, unmentioned in the document, to own slaves and held that black people have no rights that white people are bound to respect? With Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which affirmed the constitutionality of legally enforced racial segregation? With Korematsu v. United States (1944), which affirmed the wartime right to sweep American citizens of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps?

Did McCain's extravagant condemnation of the court's habeas ruling result from his reading the 126 pages of opinions and dissents? More likely, some clever ignoramus convinced him that this decision could make the Supreme Court -- meaning, which candidate would select the best judicial nominees -- a campaign issue...

The purpose of a writ of habeas corpus is to cause a government to release a prisoner or show through due process why the prisoner should be held. Of Guantanamo's approximately 270 detainees, many certainly are dangerous "enemy combatants." Some probably are not. None will be released by the court's decision, which does not even guarantee a right to a hearing. Rather, it guarantees only a right to request a hearing. Courts retain considerable discretion regarding such requests.

As such, the Supreme Court's ruling only begins marking a boundary against government's otherwise boundless power to detain people indefinitely, treating Guantanamo as (in Barack Obama's characterization) "a legal black hole."...

McCain... has referred disparagingly to, as he puts it, "quote 'First Amendment rights.' " Now he dismissively speaks of "so-called, quote 'habeas corpus suits.' " He who wants to reassure constitutionalist conservatives that he understands the importance of limited government should be reminded why the habeas right has long been known as "the great writ of liberty."

No state power is more fearsome than the power to imprison. Hence the habeas right has been at the heart of the centuries-long struggle to constrain governments, a struggle in which the greatest event was the writing of America's Constitution, which limits Congress's power to revoke habeas corpus to periods of rebellion or invasion...

As the conservative and libertarian Cato Institute argued in its amicus brief in support of the petitioning detainees, habeas, in the context of U.S. constitutional law, "is a separation of powers principle" involving the judicial and executive branches. The latter cannot be the only judge of its own judgment.

Wow, look. Some conservatives can actually put principle ahead of partianship.

Many actually can and many of those are true libertarians. I am not a conservative in any way but the republican party is and has not been conservative for a long long time. The party has been dragged out to fringe issues for a long time(same thing happened to the democrats as well).

Both republicans and democrats push for larger goverments the only difference is tome that it seems that republicans like more people in jail and not have to pay for it.

Here's what a true libertarian, Brink Lindsay from the CATO Institute, has to say about the decision and the importance of balancing the authoritarian right-wing on the Supreme Court.

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/12019? ... &out=21:51

http://judiciary.house.gov/oversight.aspx?ID=454

In testimony yesterday, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, confirmed that over 100 detainees had died in detention and that at least 25 were tortured to death.

These were interrogation techniques authorized by the president in violation of the Geneva Conventions and international law.

But hey, as long as its outside of the borders of the US, the government can do anything it wants, right?

NADLER: Your testimony said 100 detainees have died in detention; do you believe the 25 of those were in effect murdered?

WILKERSON: Mr. Chairman, I think the number’s actually higher than that now. Last time I checked it was 108, and the total number that were declared homicides by the military services, or by the CIA, or others doing investigations, CID, and so forth — was 25, 26, 27.

NADLER: Were declared homicides?

WILKERSON: Right, starting as early as December 2001 in Afghanistan.

NADLER: And these were homicides committed by people engaged in interrogations?

WILKERSON: Or in guarding prisoners, or something like that. People who were in detention.

NADLER: They were in detention, not trying to escape or anything, declared homicides by our own authorities.