What principle? That’s the point here isn’t it? Leftism is a principle free philosophy. If humping mud feels good, then hump mud. Likewise, if kneeling down prostrate before your “supposed” enemy makes you think he will respect you,or forgive you,or even love you, then by all means do that.

Let’s face it, we have TWO candidates for POTUS who believe in some form of the above so, why should the SCOTUS behave any differently?

SHOW ME !

I bet you can’t!

Better come up withj some proof before you go on making outlandish statements.

Like I said, “SHOW ME the videos.”

There’s a larger issue, though. In the past, wars were fought between nations. Armies fought and captured prisoners from their enemies, and in many cases exchanged those they captured with each other. Typically, at the end of the war the prisoners were released and repatriated home to help rebuild their countries. Those who fought on behalf of a non-national entity, or as part of an organization which wasn’t really an organized army, were executed summarily. Up through the end of the Second World War, all nations killed such people without thinking about it much. All they got was what was called a “drumhead court-martial”, so called because in earlier times a drum was used by the ersatz judge as a desk.

Now, everything has changed. Our wars aren’t against nations any more. The individuals we fight (I refuse to call them soldiers, and was periodically dismayed by Rumsfeld’s ruminations as to what they should be called) aren’t part of any organized military grouping. We can’t invade their country and overrun it because it doesn’t exist. As a result, there’s nowhere to send these people. The countries from which they originated don’t want them back, because they’re violent terrorists. If they were captured on the battlefield, somewhere in Afghanistan or elsewhere, we probably don’t have any evidence that they were doing anything violent or wrong. This leaves us with two difficulties: 1) What do we do with those we have incarcerated now? and 2) What do we do in the future?

Question 1 is rather obvious. We’re going to have to let some of these individuals go, and we’re probably going to hear about them in the future. I hope it’s not the case. I’d really prefer it if Justice Scalia was wrong (I suspect he’d like to be wrong himself, but fears he’s correct) but I’m with him: we’re going to feel this and it’s going to be painful. The second question is murkier. How, in the future, do we fight the individuals that are opposing us, in Afghanistan and Iraq. When we catch a Taliban type in Afghanistan, apparently we are going to have to provide evidence and testimony as if he was a criminal whose been arrested in Des Moines or someplace. One has a vision of 5,000 US Army Rangers landing somewhere, followed by 15,000 lawyers, 15,000 crime scene investigators, and 3,000 or so military judges. The idea is of course silly, and I can’t imagine this is going to work very well for very long. Things are going to be ignored, or alternatively, changed.

You have to wonder about judges like this. I’m all in favor of judicial integrity and don’t think they should be influenced or accessible to the population, because they need to be separate to make judgments free from the vagaries of popular culture and the transitory fads of the current generation. That being said, there’s also something to the idea that these people should have some experience of the world outside, and have some stake in how things work out. I for one am not willing to sacrifice lives for a principle, especially given how many people we lost the last time we were stupid.

Why are lefties so dishonest? Because leftism IS a lie, that’s why(Utopia on Earth is possible/Equality of outcome is desireable/People who do evil things are a “product of society”/It is destuctive to keep score at little league games). I’m glad nobody was dumb enough to respond to that kind of misleading pap. Well, there was this guy named Mark Du-something-or-other…

But he’d rather lose than do that.

Bush should direct the Attorney General to advise any court attempting to direct him in the control of such prisoners that the court lacks jurisdiction (in the absence of law or treaty) and that any orders it issues will not be enforced by the executive.

When the judges do not respect the law, there is no law.

No one was freed on Friday, likely few will be, but do we honestly want to be a nation that holds people indefinitely without trial? Last I checked we frowned on King George’s star chamber.

What rubbish !

The system that was set up provided that any decision against the incarcerated could be reviewed by the D.C. Court of Appeals. It’s only been 6 years that some of these people have been held without being processed – I’m sure if they shouldn’t be held, the D.C. Court of Appeals might let them go once they get before that tribunal; and if they don’t ever get processed and have no independent review and die in captivity — to quote Cheney — “So?” The Supreme Court now says that when the government imprisons anyone the government has to tell them why they are being charged and they get to try to show why the government is wrong. Why shouldn’t the government get to imprison anyone they want? They won’t come after me or my family, only those enemies of the state (well they might come after me when a different leader is in power, but I won’t think about that).

Why shouldn’t we be able to imprison anyone anytime based on the fact that the military or the President says he or she an enemy combatant. If our leaders say they are enemy combatants why should they be able to challenge that classification? Can anyone think of even one time when Bush or Cheney or Scooter Libby ever lied or misled the American people? They are our leaders and will only do what is best for us, and they would never mislead us, even if we can never check up on what they say.

So what if we have found out already that about a third of those imprisoned hadn’t done anything wrong. We are the land of free — everyone in the world looks up to us as the champions of freedom. Locking people up without charges, based on secret evidence they can’t see or challenge, paying $5000 or so to those who turn them in, and holding them in isolation (with maybe a little torture here and there)is the example we set when challenged by a few thousand followers of OSB.

We are a great country and anyone who criticizes what we do is a traitor. Anyone who can’t understand that this is how a great nation acts is a liberal.

Those wimps should be happy we haven’t just shot them. I mean, if they don’t have any rights, we can just shoot them right? But we didn’t do that (maybe we killed a few of them in custody) — we just are imprisoning them for a long long time with no hope of ever being released. We could have just lined the up and shot them since they are US citizens. I think McCain and others have noted that we’ve never given foreigners the rights of US citizens so it seems to me we could just shoot them, or torture their children until they confess to whatever crimes decide they are guilty of.

This decision to let them present their evidence and testimony before an impartial court is a travesty of justice. If we really have evidence that they are legitimately incarcerated then the Judges will keep them in jail. But if they can show that they are “enemy combatants” or don’t belong in jail, the Court might set them free! Why should they get to go free when the President or some Afghan warlord said they were Taliban just because they could prove they weren’t. Letting them have the chance to prove this to a court will threaten the very existence of our country.

I just wish someone else could state my arguments better, when I go back and look at them, everything doesn’t seem so clear. This is sort of complicated stuff and my first reaction seems like it might not be quite right. Won’t someone help me and state a little more clearly why our government should be able to lock up anyone just on the word of whoever turns them in, and why they shouldn’t get to prove they are innocent. Please this is really important if I am going to get to continue to say the Supreme Court was wrong.

Thanks

Dad

Angie, I won’t speak for anyone but myself – - but I think that the number of people, including the author of this article, who are jumping straight from this SC decision to the possibility of terrorists with nuclear weapons, indicates a fair level of paranoia. Should we be concerned about terrorism? Of course. But does that mean we simply allow our commander-in-chief to do whatever it takes to keep us safe from all supposed threats? Is that really the best approach for a country founded on ideas of limited government and individual freedoms? The impression I get is that a lot of people posting here would answer “yes.” I would say “no.”

And really, what does the argument that this decision will “cause more Americans to be killed” even mean? If we want to use that line of reasoning, we should never have gone to war with Iraq in the first place, because it will “cause more Americans to be killed.” The response, I’m sure, will be that it was worth it for some Americans to die for the sake of Iraq’s freedom. I personally never thought it was worth it.

So, what IS worth American lives? At the heart of it, I think that’s the question. And that is no simple question. I would only submit that sacrificing American lives in the hopes of creating a world free of fear is a tragedy based upon false hope. The antidote to fear is not finding complete safety, it is finding courage in the midst of danger.