To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
~ Thomas Jefferson
On June 12, the Supreme Court in the consolidated case of Boumediene v. Bush and "Al-Odah v. U.S., gave the roughly 270 prisoners held at our prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the same constitutional rights as you and I. These foreign terrorists all plotted, planned, fought against and even killed American soldiers, who, now thanks to an oligarchy of five justices, can go before a U.S. federal judges in civilian court to challenge their years-long detention.
Of course, the liberal media, socialist pressure groups and the Democrat Party in unison gleefully cheered the opinion as vindication of the civil rights of these global citizens, viewing them (even if they won't admit it) as "freedom fighters." However, they were especially joyful because the Court handed a bitter defeat to George W. Bush and a stinging rebuke of the president's vaunted seven-year "war on terrorism."
In a contentiously argued 5-4 vote, the Court, rejecting the administration's war on terrorism in these Guantanamo Bay cases, cavalierly struck down the will of "We the People" who through our representatives in Congress in 2006 passed comprehensive, anti-terrorism legislation specifically designed to thwart earlier mischievous opinions by the Court ("Rasul" and "Hamdan" decisions) and to affirm our over 230-year tradition of treating foreign terrorists ("enemy combatants") as a distinct class of defendants not worthy of or eligible to the same constitutional rights and due process American citizens take for granted.
Instead, the Court in the Boumediene and Al-Odah willfully and wantonly overruled the will of the people and Congress to suspend the habeas corpus rights of this dangerous and irredeemable class of criminal defendants. This decision tragically puts foreign terrorists' rights above the safety of the American people.
As if perverting the will of the Constitution, Congress and We the People alone wasn't enough, to add insult to injury "moderate conservative" Justice Anthony Kennedy had the hubris to say, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law."
That said, I only can wonder why it took Justice Kennedy 70-pages to write his majority opinion. He could have written this (and virtually all of his opinions since Reagan tragically appointed him to the bench 20 years ago in 1988) by using these three simple words – F--- the Framers! (Forget the Framers). These three words alone eloquently sum up the jurisprudence of Kennedy and his liberal colleagues on the bench, as well as their entire approach to constitutional law and judicial decision-making.
FDR and the Nazi saboteur case
I only wish President Bush would have taken the approach FDR took in the Nazi saboteur case, "Ex Parte Quirin" (1942), where in the midst of World War II eight Nazi terrorists were captured on the coasts of New York and Florida. After a summary trial in July 1942, six were summarily executed one month later after the Supreme Court upheld the jurisdiction of a U.S. military tribunal.
Regarding the Guantanamo Bay decision, President Bush six years ago should have followed FDR's lead in the Quirin case and dispatched these Muslim terrorists with a prompt military trial and a public hanging. I guarantee you that if he had acted decisively like FDR and the four great statesmen of Mount Rushmore acted during their presidencies that his name would have been regarded in as laudatory a manner as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, instead of associated with the legendary incompetence of a Jimmy Carter.
Chief Justice John Roberts in dissent wrote that the American people "lost a bit more control over the conduct of this nation's foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges." And Justice Antonin Scalia wrote of the ruling, "Most tragically it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving in a civilian court ... that evidence supports the confinement of each and every prisoner."
The liberal pressure group Amnesty International, which has been a long-time enemy of Bush's war against terrorism, was elated over the ruling. "The Supreme Court did the right thing. Everyone has the right to challenge why they're being thrown in prison, to hear the charges against them and to answer to that," said Dalia Hashad, the group's domestic human rights program director.
Of course, the ACLU was euphoric about the Court's decision on the Guantanamo Bay cases. Steven Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union said, "Today's decision forcefully repudiates the essential lawlessness of the Bush administration's failed Guantanamo policy."
If we only had a few courageous men with a bit of testosterone, a few intelligent men who actually read and understood the U.S. Constitution, not in the perverted manner of the five activist justices on the Court who only see the Constitution as tool of "social justice."
Bush and the Justice Department essentially fiddled for seven years while Americans have suffered under the trauma of 9/11, instead of Americans witnessing most if not all of the 270 Muslim terrorist swinging from the gallows as FDR did in the Quirin case 66 year ago. Now, America must needlessly suffer more pain and suffering as we soon witness these vile enemies of Israel, America and the Judeo-Christian ethic be treated as full-fledged American citizens with all the rights and privileges therein.
Is this what our Founding Fathers bled and died for? Justice Scalia rightly held that the decision "will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
Revisiting my opening quote, Jefferson was prescient in his understanding that if we allowed a majority of five justices of the Supreme Court to have the final word on all constitutional questions, America will no longer remain a representative republic, but an oligarchy.
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