A Narrow Victory Foir Justice
Posted by
Kevin
By a 5-4 vote, the Constitution has survived another day:
The Supreme Court has ruled that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the U.S. Constitution to challenge their detention in civilian courts.
The justices, in a 5-4 ruling Thursday, handed the Bush administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
“We hold these petitioners do have the habeas corpus privilege,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court majority in the 70-page opinion.
To be clear here, the Administration is claiming that it can arbitrarily decided who gets a trial or a hearing before a judge and who does not. By arguing that these people do not have rights to a trial, the Bush Administration is claiming that they have the right to detain people and then decide who gets to hear their appeals and even whether or not to allow them to appeal their detention in the first place. That is unjust and immoral and it is a direct assault on the constitution’s protections. Foreigners in this country are entitiled to the same rights and protections as US citizens when charged with a crime. It is ludicrous to believe that should change on either just the Executive’s say so or becasue of the location of the prison. Someone held by the federal government is held by the federal government whether they are in Alabama, Gitmo, or the moon.
If these people are prisoners of war, then treat them as such. If they are not, then they are criminals and should be treated the same as every other criminal in the care of the federal government. Inventing a third class of people that the executive gets to do with as they please cannot be an option under our constitution.
It does seem the tide is slowly turning on all of this. Assuming Obama wins (and even to some degree if McCain does), I’m thinking the whole “do as we wish” approach to justice is going to unwind at an amazing pace. And then the long process of restoring our standing in the international community can begin.
Comment 6/12/2008
Ted
I am less sanguine. Power is an enticing thing, and it would be hard for anyone to give it up. A National greatness conservative (and, please, someone explain to me why NG conservatives seem to think that National Greatness MUST equal blowing shit up? Wouldn’t it be great to be part of, say, finding a way off a carbon based economy?) like McCain already loves the notion of an imperial presidency.
Plus, McCain has saids he would appoint more Scalias and Alitos to the court. And Scalia and Alito are on the wrong side here.
Comment 6/12/2008
Well, I would not bet my life on McCain, but I would have some hope. On the other hand, I think Obama will unwind a lot of it. Hasn’t he already said in the first 100 days he would have a team basically dismantle the Bush signing statements? Don’t quote me on this, but I’m pretty sure that’s true. It will be ironic that Republicans will get whiplash on how quickly they reverse and start to try and reel in the power of the Executive once there is a Democrat in office.
Comment 6/12/2008
Hate to burst anyone’s bubble but America’s international standing has been in the toilet for way longer than the Bush administration. The US has been known for diplomacy at the end of the barrel of a gun ever since the Korean war. And prior to them getting pulled into World War II by the Japanese, they were viewed in many parts of the world as elitist people who didn’t care about anyone else.
From what I have seen, the UN sees the US as cannon fodder and does its utmost to get US troops sent in and killed first in any conflict. That’s not respect, that’s abuse.
Odds are very good the US will never get to the standing internationally that it deserves because there are countries that want to destroy it from without and there are people who want to destroy it from within. I wish you the best of luck.
Comment 6/12/2008
This narrow victory is proof of why it is so important that the next President be a Democrat. To all Hillary supporters who want to boycott Obama, just remember how close the Supreme Court is to leaning towards the right and how John McCain will be sure to appoint social conservatives with little regard for personal rights.
Comment 6/12/2008
Big U, it ain’t black and white. In relative terms, the reputation of the US has taken a huge hit internationally under the Bush admin. Invading a sovreign country, backing out of treaties or refusung to join them, the whole issue Kevin wrote about above…
Comment 6/12/2008
I know it’s not black and white and I know the rep has taken a hit, but only Americans thought it was very good in the first place. The US has been alternately envied/hated for decades.
As far as refusing to join treaties (i.e. Kyoto) the world’s opinion doesn’t matter in the long term because the world really could care less about the US. The weaker the US is, the easier it is for criminals to operate.
Comment 6/13/2008
“As far as refusing to join treaties (i.e. Kyoto) the world’s opinion doesn’t matter in the long term because the world really could care less about the US. The weaker the US is, the easier it is for criminals to operate.”
WTF?
Comment 6/13/2008
Kyoto, for example, would cripple the US and Canada economically while allowing countries such as China, India and Russia to continue to grow exponentially. As their economic clout increases significantly while the US and Canadian economic clout disipate, so also would their ability to control world affairs. Kyoto in reality laid out nothing that would reduce greenhouse gasses worldwide but rather was a finance redistribution plan. One of the main reasons so many countries were ticked with the US and Canada, was that it meant they wouldn’t be getting bucket loads of cash for doing nothing.
Comment 6/13/2008
Kyoto would not cripple the US and Canadian economies, especially if we made clean energy a new Manhattan Project. Indeed, it could turn out to be an economic boon, with Green sector jobs being the new IT.
Comment 6/13/2008
Here are a couple of articles relating to what Canada would face:
http://www.taxpayer.com/main/news.php?news_id=2640
http://windfarms.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/kyoto-snow-job-by-lorrie-goldstein/
And as far as green sector jobs, the truth is if there was good money to be made going green, the big companies would already be in there like dirty shirts because they all want in on the ground floor on money-makers.
I’m not trying to come across as right wing loon but the reality is Kyoto was massively flawed from the start and had very little to do with helping the environment. Especially when China was allowed to opt out.
Comment 6/13/2008
And as far as green sector jobs, the truth is if there was good money to be made going green, the big companies would already be in there like dirty shirts because they all want in on the ground floor on money-makers.
They’re actually already starting to head that way, but not too quickly, because they want to make sure they squeeze every dime out of fossil fuels first. And fossil fuels are cheap (even at today’s prices) relatively speaking, because the market does such a lousy job of accounting for externalities in pricing.
I’m not going to argue with you about Kyoto being deeply flawed — it absolutely was, not the least of which because it didn’t go nearly far enough. But the fact remains that the cost to the US of fully implementing Kyoto would have been substantially less than the cost of the Iraq war so far. If the economy can sustain the latter, which doesn’t have any longer-term positive economic impacts, than I submit that it could have sustained the former, which does.
I’m also not saying that weaning off of carbon energy wouldn’t hurt at first. Of course it would. But it wouldn’t be the sort of economic suicide that its detractors seem to think.
And for what it’s worth, if we hadn’t spent the last 30 years with such a short-sighted energy policy, we wouldn’t have all these people driving 18MPG SUVs and whining about $4/gallon ($1.25/litre in Canada) gas prices.
Comment 6/13/2008
on the contrary, by the same logic that tells us people in a democracy get the government they deserve, i would say odds are excellent the USA already has precisely the international standing it has deserved.
Comment 6/16/2008