April 27, 2004, Bad Enough We GAVE You This Job. Now You're Making Us Tell You How to Do It Too?
That's right, boys and girls-- the Supreme Court of the United States, on two consecutive days, will confront the two most egregious abuses of power by the Bush Administration (IMHO-- God knows, there is a wide variety of choices in that category). But your Talking Dog, Esq. considers these two cases-- Vice President Cheney's outrageously arrogant and indeed monarchial insistence that he can protect even the identities of his oil industry buddies as state secrets even while they shred environmental laws and re-write the nation's other laws to their own benefit, i.e., "the Energy Task Force", and the other case involving citizens locked up as "enemy combatants" in legal limbo, to be the two biggest abuses of the most abusive Administration of my lifetime (and my lifetime includes the entire Nixon Administration).
While the case is now being pursued by environmental pressure groups (God bless 'em) like the Sierra Club, IIRC, it was started by one of my old alma maters, the General Accounting Office (investigative arm of Congress). Cheney raised the same horseshit separation of powers arguments at the time, and IIRC, a lower court bought it (or perhaps Cheney bought a lower court?) although it was promptly reversed, and here we are on Capitol Hill before the guys and gals in black robes-- including Dicky's huntin' buddy Mr. Justice Antonin "Bushmaster" Scalia. (Dick, -- sorry to harp on you this week, my man, but you're blog boffo, baby! )
The other case is quite literally the most important case of our lives-- forget about Roe v. Wade, or Bakke, or even Bush v. Gore. The cases of Hamdi and Padilla are, quite literally, the thin line between whether we are a free country-- period-- or not. As you will recall, Mr. Padilla (potentially also John Doe No. 2 from Oklahoma City, according to at least one decent conspiracy theory espoused by the Junk Yard Blog) was picked up on a flight from Pakistan to Chicago, and accused of plotting to detonate a so-called "dirty bomb" in the United States, then placed in criminal lock up, then removed to a brig, where he has been denied charge, counsel or trial for over two years as an "enemy combatant" at the whim of the President. U.S. Atty. Gen. John "I'm truly too stupid to even sense the irony" Ashcroft announced the good news of Padilla's capture from Moscow.
The other so-called enemy combatant is Hamdi, picked up on a battlefield in Afghanistan, and later brought to the same brig as Padilla when it was determined he was born in Louisiana, and hence an American citizen, where he too has been denied charge, counsel or trial, at the ongoing whim of the President.
Police states don't START with arresting clean-cut WASP Ivy Leaguers who might have "a little problem" with the government at some protest rally in Princeton. They start easy: I'm sure none of us would want to walk down the same street as either Messrs. Padilla or Hamdi, who I have no doubt are... difficult people. But if any one of us can have the protections of our Constitution stripped away from us, at whim, ever, then what good is our Constitution? We will not be subject to "rule of law", but of (rather venal) men. We will simply be an elected dictatorship-- nothing more. You and I will have no more protection from arbitrary arrest and detention in this country than we would in Saddam's Iraq (or Bremer's Iraq for that matter-- and you wonder why they are resisting).
Frankly, the emotions of 9-11 have long since died down. The Government's position is simply indefensible. I fully expect a 9-0 vote affirming the Second Circuit's holding as to Padilla: charge him, or release his ass. NOW. And then I expect the same holding as to Hamdi.
Yes, they may be bad dudes. But they are Americans. And if that doesn't mean something-- hell, if that doesn't mean EVERYTHING, RIGHT NOW, it never will, and we will have seen the end of this nation as we knew it and as we imagined it.
And yes, its that bad.
Comments
And meanwhile:
This case is another illustration of what the Patriot Act can lead to, whenever someone in the Justice Department feels like doing it:
As a Web master to several Islamic organizations, Mr. Hussayen helped to maintain Internet sites with links to groups that praised suicide bombings in Chechnya and in Israel. But he himself does not hold those views, his lawyers said. His role was like that of a technical editor, they said, arguing that he could not be held criminally liable for what others wrote.
Civil libertarians say the case poses a landmark test of what people can do or whom they can associate with in the age of terror alerts. It is one of the few times anyone has been prosecuted under language in the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, which makes it a crime to provide "expert guidance or assistance" to groups deemed terrorist.
"Somebody who fixes a fax machine that is owned by a group that may advocate terrorism could be liable," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who argued against the expert guidance part of the antiterrorism law this year, in a case where it was struck down by a federal judge.
Meanwhile, Bush waxes eloquent as the technical editor sits in jail:
"The Patriot Act defends our liberty, is what it does, under the Constitution of the United States," Mr. Bush said in Buffalo on Tuesday.
Posted by rorschach at April 28, 2004 11:46 AM
Should have been italicized down through the words "federal judge."
Ah well.
Posted by rorschach at April 28, 2004 11:47 AM
If the GAO is one of your alma maters, it must have grieved you to learn that Cheney threatened the budget to the point where they had to back off the court case they'd been fighting.
I worry about these Justices; I'm not sure they'll decide that this usurpation of power by the Executive branch is too much. The questioning I heard today was a little too polite for my liking (from the swing votes; I expected near perfect pitch from Scalia in approval).
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