SCOTUS To The Decider: "Think Again!"
In a Supreme Court decision where activist judges Scalia and Thomas dissented and Justice Freeper-A-Lito recused himself, the remaining 5 justice majority came out and smacked The Decider upside his fake Christian noggin regarding those military tribunals for Club Gitmo guests. Ripping from the WaPo:The Supreme Court today delivered a stunning rebuke to the Bush administration over its plans to try Guantanamo detainees before military commissions, ruling that the commissions violate U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of war prisoners.
In a 5-3 decision, the court said the trials were not authorized by any act of Congress and that their structure and procedures violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the opinion in the case, called Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ...
The ruling, which overturned a federal appeals court decision in which Roberts had participated, represented a defeat for President Bush, who had ordered trials before special military tribunals for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base. About 450 detainees captured in the war on terrorism are currently held at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. Trying them before military commissions would place them under greater restrictions and afford them fewer rights than they would get in federal courts or regular military courts.
But, before you get excited, the WaPo report tells us that although The Decider can't break the UCMJ and the Geneva Conventions using military tribunals any longer, The Decider can still break the Geneva Conventions and carry on with waterboarding Club Gitmo guests since SCOTUS is rather squeamish when it comes to revoking the ol' business license:
The ruling does not mean that the United States must close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility or free any of its detainees, including Hamdan.
Nontheless, there is one sweet taste in this ruling from the dissenting opinions of Scalito and Thomas and how they were totally smacked down by Justices Stevens and Breyer whom told the the Freeper-Boys that their precious "Unitary Executive Theory" can go straight to hell (hell being the rubber-stamp Republican-controlled Congress) and the Diebold voting machine it rode in on:
In a dissenting opinion, Scalia pointed to congressional enactment on Dec. 30, 2005, of the Detainee Treatment Act, which provides that as of that date, "no court, justice or judge" shall have jurisdiction to consider an application by a Guantanamo detainee for habeas corpus, challenging his detention.
Thomas said in another dissenting opinion that the Supreme Court "lacks jurisdiction" to consider Hamdan's claims because of that law and that "its opinion openly flouts our well-established duty to respect the Executive's judgment in matters of military operations and foreign affairs."
For the first time in his 15-year tenure on the court, Thomas took the unusual step of reading part of his dissenting opinion from the bench. The court's willingness "to second-guess the determination of the political branches that these conspirators must be brought to justice is both unprecedented and dangerous," he said.
Stevens wrote, however, that although the Detainee Treatment Act implicitly recognizes the existence of the military commissions, it "contains no language authorizing that tribunal or any other at Guantanamo Bay." Moreover, neither the act nor a congressional authorization for the use of military force against terrorists in 2001 "expands the president's authority to convene military commissions."
In a concurring opinion, Breyer strongly disputed the dissenters' assertion that today's ruling would, as Thomas wrote, "sorely hamper the president's ability to defeat a new and deadly enemy."
"The Court's conclusion ultimately rests upon a single ground: Congress has not issued the Executive a 'blank check,' Breyer wrote. "Indeed, Congress has denied the president the legislative authority to create military commissions of the kind at issue here. Nothing prevents the president from returning to Congress to seek the authority he believes necessary."
Speaking of Freepers, let's get their unhinged reactions:
sdilliard: Oh, the response to this is easy: find the guys on the battlefield; ask them the questions we need to ask; and them shoot the ones who don't answer. No trials. No fuss, no muss.
observer5: AUTHORIZING THE MASS MURDER OF UNBORN OR HALFBORN BABIES!
blitzgig: Bush should simply ignore the Court like Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln did.
goldstategop: The Court overstepped its bounds and encroached on the prerogatives of the Commander In Chief. He commands the military, not nine people in black robes.
curiosity: We should have tried and executed the terrorists immediately using the procedures that we used against the Nazi sabateurs during WW2. If they were dead, they wouldn't have been able to challange the policy in court.
longtermmemory: Message to soldiers, dead terrorists don't speak to the ACLU.
Patriotic conservative: The president's duty is to protect this nation, not to ignore silly conventions burocrats right. I hope he ignores this and continues torturing those lowlives and giving them what they deserve.
Yeap, their leaderhosen's all up in knots, so SCOTUS sure did something right.
Technorati Tags: Hamdan, Bush, SCOTUS, Politics
posted by Sizemore at
8:01 PM
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