SUPREMES: KNOCK IT OFF
"A state of war 'is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens,' Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (news - web sites) wrote in the most significant case of the day, a ruling that gives American-born detainee Yaser Esam Hamdi the right to fight his detention in a federal court."
In other news, unnamed administration officials characterize O'Connor as "disgruntled" and "having an agenda". Who appointed her to the court, anyway?
posted by Anonymous at 9:59 PM
1 Comments:
I cannot begin to tell you what good news this is. As the situation stood, the President was truly arguing that he retained dictatorial powers, because of a generalized state of war.
The danger was, and to an extent is, absolutely real. The declaration of "enemy combatant" by the executive branch has no real standards, and it is being applied to American citizens. If we use the definition of terrorist in the Patriot, almost anyone involved with an organization that had ever advocated violence to effective political change could be classified as an enemy combatant. Like say, George Washington.
Even in WWII, when comparable power were used in the Nazi spies case, it was misapplied - at least three of the Nazi saboteurs (that's a much sexier name than "terrorist") may have been trying to defect and had certainly provided us with very valuable intelligence.
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