June 30, 2006
"The Court is giving the administration a mulligan."
Writes Randy Barnett about Hamdan. "But the do-over will be much more difficult than the initial shot would have been. It did not have to be this way." He identifies two "colossal errors" that the Bush Administration made. He also links to Jack Balkin's Hamdan post, elegantly titled "Hamdan as a Democracy-Forcing Decision."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
10 comments:
The Divider could have used the opportunity to involve the citizen in civil defense preparation.
Providing funds and encouragement for each neighborhood to have teams that know who and where the elderly and kids live, to know first aid and have well stocked first aid supplies, to know how to communicate best with others in the city if telephone systems go down, to know who the engineers are and where the bulldozers are in case a neighborhood has to provide for its own ability for self-rescue. Neighborhoods could have been encouraged to make sure they have supplies of water and C-Rations.
All of this would be handy not just for a terrorist attack, but it would be especially useful when nature strikes: Katrina, and Ice Storm, an 8.0 on the Hayward fault.
All of this would have acted to bring people together, to foster discussion, and to help people understand and take ownership of the war being fought in our name.
Lots of other stuff to do, but in essence what we were told is that we weren't competent, should not worry about what Dad is going to do for us, and to go shopping.
I don't think we need a volunteer militia, but then you have to understand that Randy Barnett is part of the alien wingnut conspiracy over at V'olokh dot com.
So it appears that Bush was seeking a way to get these guys their day in court but were thwarted by SCOTUS.
...
History points to the forced internment of Japanese citizens during WW2 to prevent terrorist activities on American soil.
What we are seeing at Gitmo is the latest version of dealing with subversion and terrorism with an eye to keeping terrorists out of the anti-American tentacles of OJ juries and the ACLU.
Wow, self-delusion, willful ignorance, or ironic parody of the wingnut contingent? Well played sir!
Barnett is wrong about this. What Bush did was approved by the Supreme Court in WWII. It is this Supreme Court that is ignoring established law.
This a big boon for the Republicans. The Supreme Court's mistake can easily be fixed by legislation. Every one who votes against the fix will be seen as supporting terrorists.
Once again, it's obvious that many still see Bush as a greater threat than terrorists. Beyond delusional.
The war on terror was Bush's to lose. I don't congratulate the terrorists for winning, I blame Bush for losing.
Ms. Althouse, if you've had a chance to read/digest the opinion, did you see anything Congress did wrong or poorly in stripping jurisdiction, or is this just one of those games that you cannot win sometimes?
PD: In retrospect, it seems Congress should have drafted the legislation spelling out the details with an eye toward eliminating everything that could possibly have been seen as a loophole. This question of application to pending cases should have been seen and explicitly dealt with. The same thing came up in Lindh with respect to AEDPA, which Stevens discusses in Hamdan.
Sure, pooka, let's follow Bill Veck's Grandstand Manager style of governance. Every time Veck had to make a decision, he'd turn to the crowd and ask, for instance, "bunt" or "swing" and the crowd would cheer for their choice.
And if we make any more "colossal errors" we should allow Osama to burn down another building, or whichever penalty the crowd decides upon. Of course, the building housing the detainee's lawyers would be exempt.
I first read that as "giving this administration a mullet." What the heck is that a metaphor for? Never mind.
The effect of Justice Stevens decision is not only to give the administration a mulligan, but a mulligan complete with instructions on how to avoid further necessity for SCOTUS intervention.
It is almost like the dreaded "advisory opinion" which is supposed to be avoided at all costs.
I think that is a good thing under the circumstances of this case, and avoids a constitutional crisis except among the extremes of the political spectrum.
Post a Comment