Watch Out! Everyone's an American, Now
Filed under: US Elections
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday handed down its decision in the Boumediene case. With a 5-4 vote, just one unelected Supreme Court judge, the moderate Anthony Kennedy (shown above, he wrote the decision), who sided with the court's four left-wing liberals, suddenly discovered, after more than 200 years of the U.S. Constitution's existence, that it applies to people who are neither (a) American citizens nor (b) even located on American soil. The court's four conservative judges harshly rejected the decision.
The case involves prisoners of war who are housed at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The court ruled that they have the right to invoke the "writ of habeas corpus" provision in the Constitution that lets a court set someone free from illegal arrest prior to trial. Writing in opposition to the decision another judge, Antonin Scalia, stated: "Today, for the first time in our Nation's history, the court confers a constitutional right to habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad. The writ of habeas corpus does not, and never has, run in favor of aliens abroad." Scalia notes five incidents of radical Islamic terror against the U.S. that have cost 3,434 American lives in just the past few years.
Scalia condemns "the game of bait and switch that today's opinion plays upon the Nation's Commander in Chief" and warns that it will make the war on terrorism "harder on us" and "almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed" since they will be less able to defend themselves. He says that the decision "warps our Constitution" and "blatantly misdescribes important precedents" to "break a chain of precedents as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into detentions of aliens abroad absent statutory authorization."
And he warns: "Most tragically, it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner."
The world should be shocked and outraged by this decision, for two reasons.
First, it implies that the U.S. Constitution applies to the whole world. It follows that American governance does too.
Second, it tells the U.S. military in no uncertain terms that it should not take prisoners. It should simply kill all enemy combatants on sight, or face bankruptcy trying to prove their need to be imprisoned -- and face barbaric terrorism if forced to free them into our midst.
This is the result of so-called liberalism. The world seems not to understand that it is the party of the right in America which favors governmental restraint, and the party of the left which favors unbridled governmental ambition. If George Bush took an action like this, the mootbats of the Daily Kos for instance would condemn it, but when it comes from "their" judges apparently it's just fine and dandy.
Unelected judges, even nine in agreement, can't make military policy. When just a single judge tries to do so, the result can only be catastrophe. First the California Supreme Court legalizes gay marriage, and now the U.S. Supreme Court extends the U.S. Constitution to the whole world. It seems America's courts are doing all they can to assure Republican victory in November.
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