WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — The Bush administration on Wednesday reasserted its broad authority to declare American citizens to be enemy combatants, and it suggested that the Supreme Court consider two prominent cases at the same time.
The Justice Department, in a brief filed with the court, said it would seek an expedited appeal of a federal appeals court decision last month in the case of Jose Padilla, jailed as an enemy combatant in 2002.
The divided Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled on Dec. 18 that President Bush lacked the authority to indefinitely detain an American citizen like Mr. Padilla who was arrested on American soil simply by declaring him an enemy combatant. Mr. Padilla has been held incommunicado at a military brig in South Carolina. American authorities say he plotted with operatives of Al Qaeda overseas to detonate a "dirty" radiological bomb in the United States.
It says a lot about the state of this country when so few people stood up and said, "Now wait a fucking minute. This guy is being denied his basic fifth and eigth amendment rights because he's....an enemy combatant? And that is what exactly? And he gets this title just because you fucking say so?
Again, lemme get this straight. If tomorrow I'm picked up by guys in flak jackets at my office and declared an enemy combatant, I have no access to a lawyer, no public trial, no right to see the evidence of even the CHARGES for fucks sake, and I have no recourse to challenge this ruling. Because George W. Bush and John Ashcroft say so.
How the hell did we let this progress to this point.
But the Justice Department said in its brief that the ruling was "fundamentally at odds" with court precedent on presidential powers.
The decision "undermines the president's constitutional authority to protect the nation," Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson wrote.
Is this piece of shit actually citing the constitution in order to deny American citizens their constitutional rights? Excuse me, but I think the sick irony here is about to make my head explode.
Wow. The Balls on these fucking guys.
Posted by mike at January 8, 2004 12:58 AMCam, bro.
Nobody, well not me at least, is criticizing the US government for arresting this guy. If there's probably cause, by all means, arrest the guy.
It's the whole lack of a trial and imposition of substitute courts whose decisions can't be appealed type of thing that gets me. You know, stuff like that.
As for the WWII analogy, two things. One, I wouldn't argue that it made the country any safer. In fact, men who could otherwise be serving in the army were instead incarcerated. And what good is safety without freedom anyway?
Two, "life, liberty, and........the pursuit of happiness." Not property. That's John Locke. And the quote was altered and deliberately left out of the Dec. of Independence so as to avoid language that smacked of aristocracy.
Posted by: Mike on January 23, 2004 10:18 PM