Steele delivered a rousing speech after winning the race, pledging to re-establish the Republican presence in the northeast and win elections in regions across the country.The FBI has finally recognized that CAIR is a smarmy group of terrorist enablers:
"It's time for something completely different, and we're gonna bring it to them," he said. "Get ready, baby. It's time to turn it on."
Steele said he would work to build the party to an unprecedented level and warned: "For those of you who wish to obstruct, get ready to get knocked down."
The FBI is severing its once-close ties with the nation's largest Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, amid mounting evidence that it has links to a support network for Hamas.The bad...
All local chapters of CAIR have been shunned in the wake of a 15-year FBI investigation that culminated with the conviction in December of Hamas fundraisers at a trial where CAIR itself was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator.
Putting detainees on trial in U.S. courts raises a host of problems starting with the fact that few, if any, of the suspected terrorists were read their Miranda rights when they were picked up on foreign battlefields.
Bringing them to the United States creates the possibility they could be freed here. Writes former Homeland Security Department lawyer Andrew J. Puglia Levy for Forbes.com: "Under current law once a detainee sets foot in the United States, it’s possible that he eventually could be walking the streets.” [...]
Most of the remaining detainees at Guantanamo are extremely dangerous. And some of those who’ve been released have rejoined the terror fight.
Bringing sworn enemies of the United States to American soil is an outrageously bad idea. There’s one trial balloon quickly turned to lead.
A driver for Osama bin Laden was not told of any rights against self-incrimination under years of interrogation, FBI agents told the Guantanamo war crimes court on Thursday. [...]I'd like to think a military tribunal might be more impervious to stupid arguments such as this than the Kennedy Faction on the Supreme Court; but get ready, because this won't be the last time you hear bullshit defenses like this. Especially if John McCain gets his chance to close Guantánamo, as he has promised.
The commission's chief defense counsel, Col. Steve David, said after Thursday's court session that Hamdan's lawyers intended on Friday to raise "significant new evidence" regarding Hamdan's treatment in interrogations that could reopen the issue of whether evidence can be used against him.
A 16-year-old captured in Afghanistan and held at Guantánamo Bay sobbed during his questioning, holding up his wounded arms and begging for help in a video released Tuesday that provided the first glimpse of interrogations at the U.S. military prison.Mr. Khadr's arms weren't wounded at Guantánamo, they were injured while he was fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan, where his father is - or was - an Al Qaeda head honcho. He's charged with throwing the hand grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer of Albuquerque, N.M. His brother is in jail in Canada on terrorism charges. Sounds to me like Mr. Khadr comes by his stupidity honestly. At least he has the good sense to be scared.
Amnesty International is currently touring the country with a life-sized replica of a maximum security prison cell at Guantánamo Bay. But critics say the cell, which is an attempt to call attention to alleged human rights abuses at the camp, is missing basic amenities provided to prisoners.Some of the truth, but not all the truth, just a enough of the truth to make a preconceived point. A full model with all the attention to detail that's deserved would poke a big hole in their premise. No, Gitmo doesn't come with a Westin Heavenly Bed - but it's not even close to being a Soviet gulag.
The 7x10-foot cell, on display on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., lacks amenities like bedding, toiletries and a copy of the Koran, and it has nothing to illustrate that regular meals are served to inmates three times a day.
Until last week, the law had been that there were some places in the world where American courts had no jurisdiction. For example, U.S. courts had no jurisdiction over non-citizens who have never set foot in the United States. [...]The lady makes a good point. If we simply must take the bastards alive - which has always been an unappealing option in my book - let's send them someplace Justice Kenburgstevouter definitely has no authority. I hear the prisons in Thailand are lovely this time of year.
If Justice Kennedy can review the procedures for detaining enemy combatants trying to kill Americans in the middle of a war, no place is safe. It's only a matter of time before the Supreme Court steps in to overrule Randy, Paula and Simon. [...]
As one law professor said to me, this is what happens when the swing justice is the dumb justice. [...]
The logical result of Boumediene is for the U.S. military to exert itself a little less trying to take enemy combatants alive. The military also might consider not sending the little darlings to the Guantanamo Spa and Resort.
Terrorist suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have the right to petition US civilian courts to release them, the Supreme Court held in the Boumediene v. Bush opinion released earlier this morning.Something John McCain is all in favor of. Just imagine all the enemy combatants making a mockery of our judicial system while luxuriating in the new Geneva Convention Suites at Fort Leavenworth. Which is what will happen under President McCain. For all of you who think John McCain is going to appoint conservatives to the court, justices who might damage his precious McCain-Feingold or have a realistic understanding of the war we are fighting, don't fool yourselves about The McCain Court:
In a 5-4 decision that could derail the trials of admitted terrorists including 9-11 planner Khalid Sheik Muhammad, the high court ruled unconstitutional part of the 2006 Military Commissions Act which barred terrorist prisoners from asserting the right to habeas corpus writs in US courts.
The majority opinion was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in which Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter and Stevens concurred. Chief Justice Roberts, along with Justices Scalia, Alito and Thomas dissented.
In the summary of the opinion released by the court says directly that, “Petitioners have the Constitutional privilege of habeas corpus. They are not barred from seeking the writ or invoking the Suspension Clause’s protections because they have been designated as enemy combatants or because of their presence at Guantanamo.’
This ruling may result in the release of some Guantanamo inmates and the transfer of others’ trials into the civilian criminal justice system.
But will the Arizonan make good and usher in a conservative majority on the Court? Unlikely. Republicans hoping to rally their dispirited base in 2008 can find little evidence that John McCain is interested in effecting a judicial counter-revolution. [...]The article goes on to say that McCain may be more interested in his legacy as President than as Senator, and that will cause him to keep his promise about appointing conservative justices. However, given his past record of stabbing conservatives in the back, I don't believe it for a second. Trust him and you'll end up "Gang-o-14-Banged" by the Maverick and his Senatorial disciples.
Given the chance to join conservatives in disarming Democratic opposition to conservative judges, McCain compromised. Lacking incentives to appoint strict constructionists, his attitude toward judicial conservatives runs between indifference and hostility. And while McCain dutifully praises Roberts and Alito in public, he sometimes questions their rulings—particularly when they threaten to overturn his legislative legacy. [...]
Rather than contending with the constitutional question, McCain joined Democrat Ben Nelson to form the Gang of 14. The seven participating Democrats agreed that for the duration of the 109th Congress they would no longer vote with their party to filibuster judicial nominees except in “extraordinary circumstances”; in turn the seven Republicans would refuse to vote with then Majority Leader Bill Frist on the “nuclear option.” For hardcore conservatives, the Gang of 14, though expedient to confirm Roberts and Alito, placed principle second to bipartisan accommodation. Even today, McCain admits that his deal with Democrats ensured that several of Bush’s appointments to federal appeals courts were permanently sidelined. [...]
McCain would be the first president in the modern era to come into office with major legislative accomplishments at the federal level. As conservative legal blogger Illya Somin wrote at “The Volokh Conspiracy”, “a President McCain would face a difficult tradeoff between the goal of appointing conservative jurists and the goal of saving the McCain-Feingold law from invalidation by the Court.”
Protecting a senator’s legacy is rarely the assigned duty of a Supreme Court justice, but it isn’t unprecedented. Franklin Roosevelt, notorious for his conflicts with the High Court, appointed Hugo Black, a Democratic senator from Alabama and key ally on New Deal legislation. Black went on to reverse the Court’s trend of overruling the battery of programs he and FDR championed.
While McCain heaps praise on Roberts and Alito on the campaign trail, he surely realizes these two justices are doing more than any others to erase his proudest legislative achievement, campaign finance reform.
We hold that Art. I, §9, cl. 2, of the Constitution has full effect at Guantanamo Bay.Here's what that part of the Constitution says:
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.Surely "Justice" Kennedy read past the comma, right? Right?
Next month, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was once a driver for Osama bin Laden, could become the first detainee to be tried for war crimes in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. By now, he should be busily working on his defense.These are people who believe their god wants them to blow up women and children and fly planes into skyscrapers. Their minds were "boiled" long before they got to Gitmo.
But his lawyers say he cannot. They say Hamdan, already the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, has essentially been driven insane by solitary confinement in a tiny cell where he spends at least 22 hours a day, goes to the bathroom and eats all his meals. His defense team says he is suicidal, hears voices, has flashbacks, talks to himself and says the restrictions of Guantánamo "boil his mind."
"He will shout at us," said his military defense lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer. "He will bang his fists on the table."
His lawyers have asked a military judge to stop his case until Hamdan is placed in less restrictive conditions at Guantánamo, saying he cannot get a fair trial if he cannot focus on defending himself. The judge is to hear arguments as soon as Monday on whether he has the power to consider the claim.
Critics have long asserted that Guantánamo's climate-controlled isolation is a breeding ground for insanity. But turning that into a legal claim marks a new stage for the military commissions at Guantánamo. As military prosecutors push to get trials under way, they are being met with challenges not just to the charges, but to Guantánamo itself.
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