Mark Levin and Andy McCarthy discussed today’s Supreme Court decision to direct the Appeals Court to reconsider a civil suit claiming torture by four Brits who are former Guantanamo detainees. McCarthy summed it up perfectly, “It used to be … that when the United States went to war, the whole government went to war and the courts were deemed to be part of that government.”
From AFP this afternoon:
The US Supreme Court on Monday revived a lawsuit by four former British detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, ordering a lower court to reconsider their claims of torture and religious bias.
The justices ordered a Washington DC appeals court to review its January 2008 ruling quashing the lawsuit against former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and 10 senior US military officers.
The high court said the case should be reconsidered in light of its June 12 ruling that prisoners held at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba had a right to challenge their detention in civilian courts.
In their suit, the Britons claimed they were protected against torture by a US constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. They also argued that their rights to practice their religion under the US Religious Freedom Restoration Act were violated at Guantanamo.
Andrew McCarthy: This is a very bad development. Even if you accept the premise that detainee treatment policy needs to be reworked, it does not follow that we want the courts to do the reworking  much less do so in the context of an action for civil damages in our courts by our enemies. Moreover, the Supreme Court’s June 12 ruling in Boumediene held strictly that detainees were entitled to judicial review of the military’s determination of their status as enemy combatants; neither it nor the Court’s 2006 Hamdan decision (giving the detainees at least some rights under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions) held that the detainees had a right to bring a suit in federal court against the government officials responsible for prosecuting against them a war that was approved overwhelmingly by Congress and is supported overwhelmingly by the American people… MORE
Hannity looks nicer in person
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After several centuries this Supreme Court finally figured out what every previous Supreme Court never discovered. This Court understands the Constitution better than what the originators actually understood when they wrote what they wrote; these Supreme leftists are mind readers who don’t even need to refer to the written document. Just when we thought that Hillary Clinton had communication with Eleanor Roosevelt we need to assume that some of the present Court must have psychic perceptional powers that span centuries since they communicate with the Founding Fathers.
If the Executive Branch, by executive order, or by some invented authority overstepped their Constitutional limitations and invaded the space of the judiciary, just the way the judiciary invades their space, they would rightly be castigated; and yet the opposite can be done by the Supremes, without consequence or even notice, because they seem to possess the inviolable righteousness of Gods. There is no recourse from their decrees, there is no way out, there is no workaround. The Romans said, “who watches the Watchers?†Moreover who can stop these watchers?
Why would any government founders, let alone our own, develop a system that would undermine itself, and place its’ constituents at risk? Imagine a doctor that has taken an oath to cure, and to do no harm, actually, deliberately use that oath to disregard the health of his wards? The freedom, liberty and ability to pursue happiness cannot automatically be provided, by our Constitution, via domestic courts, to all World inhabitants, when they are not citizens, not on our soil and when they are caught in acts pertaining to our demise. Our own military does not posses that advantage. Only recently have courts leaned that way and yet there is sound, long-standing precedent to prevent such overreaching.
The safety and security of the US and its citizens is the domain of the Executive and Legislative branches and to that extent the one branch that has the least authority to be involved with such activity is the Judicial. With this present crew you might as well consider military courts and tribunals for foreign, non-uniformed combatants as vestigial and useless.
After the 1993 WTC attack I suspected that we would be hit again so 911 did not surprise me. The reason I knew was because we never really fought a war. The enemy was fighting a war of terror and we responded using the courts as our battlefield while using ineffectual laws and statutes as our weapons; the enemy took no casualties, hence we had 911. We are now unlearning the lessons that we learned from the 911 tragedies. We had a good start but now appear to be shifting into neutral. Does Obama and his nominees throw us into reverse?
There will never be a defense as good as an offence and so this war will never be won in the courts. The only way we seem to get it right is after we endure civilian casualties and to that extent our own legal system and media has become the preferred weapon of the enemy. It is not legislators and executives that need sons and daughters in harms way… it is the judges.
After 1993 I looked at the future and I didn’t like what I saw. Considering what our enemies would like to do to us I again don’t have a very good feeling; the last thing we need as a solution is a Supreme Court that has about as much understanding of how to run a war as they do of the Constitution that clearly tells them not to get involved.