Another Fight They’ll Lose
That’s essentially what this Washington Times article is about. Here’s what’s at issue:
Republican leaders in Congress said yesterday that they will draft legislation to grant the Bush administration the authority to try prisoners at Guantánamo Bay before a military tribunal, a move that sets up a contentious debate between Republicans and Democrats on a hot-potato national-security issue just four months before midterm elections.
Here’s what Republicans are proposing:
“Following the July Fourth recess, I will introduce legislation, in consultation with the administration and my colleagues, that authorizes military commissions and appropriate due-process procedures for trials of terrorist combatants,” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said yesterday after the court’s decision.
Here’s the Democrats’ non-plan:
Democrats, meanwhile, staked out territory on the other side of the issue. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, (D-VT), and ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee, said the administration’s handling of the Guantánamo detainees had eroded its ability to fight a vigorous war on terror. “For five years, the Bush-Cheney administration has violated fundamental American values, tarnished our standing in the world and hindered the partnerships we need with our allies,” he said. “This arrogance and incompetence have delayed and weakened the handling of the war on terror, not because of any coherent strategic view it had, but because of its stubborn unilateralism and dangerous theory of unfettered power.”
It seems to me that this decision should trigger a no-brainer solution: Congress should pass a law that grants the President the proper authority. That’s precisely what Bill Frist and Lindsey Graham intend to do.
Furthermore, I’d laugh at Sen. Leahy’s statement that “This arrogance and incompetence have delayed and weakened the handling of the war on terror…” Ask Zarqawi if “this arrogance” has weakened the handling of the GWOT. That is, if they can raise him at their next seance.
If Democrats want to fight Frist’s and Graham’s legislation, then expect them to lose more seats this November. That’s a fight they can’t win.
Technorati Tags: SCOTUS, GWOT, Gitmo, Hamdan
Cross-post at LetFreedomRingBlog
June 29th, 2006 at 11:03 pm
Overlooking, of course, the fine point that what the SCOTUS said was that what he’d been doing up until now has been illegal. Spin spin spin…..
June 30th, 2006 at 12:48 am
Supreme Court Blocks Bush, Gitmo War Trials
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military
June 30th, 2006 at 6:09 am
There’s only one flaw with your analysis: They didn’t violate any existing law. It’s impossible to break the law when no law exists.
June 30th, 2006 at 8:12 am
June 30th, 2006 at 8:25 am
Except for the part that the Geneva Convention specifically says that the Conventions rule only when combatants, whether they’re part of a resistance organization, militia or a nation’s military, have to be wearing a “fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance.” Clearly, they weren’t wearing that, thus making the Geneva Convention’s rules inapplicable before yesterday’s ruling.
What the SCOTUS did yesterday was, in effect, add to the Geneva Convention by judicial fiat. This wasn’t negotiated between participating countries. It wasn’t signed by a sitting president & it certainly didn’t get ratified by the Senate.
June 30th, 2006 at 9:27 am
Someone on another blog wrote that Bush could refuse to obey the Court on this, as the Court was expressly removed from appelate oversight on this question. That law was passed by Congress and is legal under the Constituion. This argument means that the decision is invalid as the Court has no legal authority to rule on the question. That’s a set up for a “constitutional crisis”, but it might be worth it. The other, less severe alternative is to set up the tribunals (or whatever) under the Court’s guidelines and force the Congressional Dems to filibuster. That’s political suicide for November. The easiest way to deal with all of it is to repatriate these Gitmo Guys back to Afghanistan but have the plane “mysterioulsy explode” on the way. And last, no more Gitmo Guys will be moving to Cuba. Our forces will just shoot them when they find them.
June 30th, 2006 at 9:34 am
June 30th, 2006 at 9:36 am
Scott, Rush is just talking about what you just said. You’re exactly right that the 4 liberal idiots + Justice Kennedy just threw out the law that Congress passed & President Bush signed into law.
Much is made of the ‘Bush overstepped’ meme but it’s actually more true that Justices Breyer, Bader-Ginsburg, Stevens & Souter overstepped their constitutional authority.
June 30th, 2006 at 9:53 am
Scott, pay no attention to Gary, he obviously is just repeating things that others say withot reading it himself. (By the way, my comment #6 was a response to Gary’s comment that the Geneva Conventions don’t apply because they weren’t wearing signs/symbols.)
As to your question about the Court being “removed” from this case which the Court then “ignored,” that’s not true. Congress did remove several types of cases from the Court, but they specifically left out the “removal language” when talking about cases like the one heard yesterday.
June 30th, 2006 at 9:56 am
I know that they didn’t apply Article 4. They didn’t have the right to ignore that since that’s part of the treaty that was signed & ratified. There’s a reason why we insisted on “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
They can’t omit parts of treaties just because it doesn’t fit their ruling. Article 4 specifically states the conditions that must be met in order for the Geneva Conventions to be applicable.
June 30th, 2006 at 9:59 am