Court sides with WH on Bagram detainees, temporarily
posted at 12:55 pm on June 2, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
Share on Facebook | printer-friendly
The Obama administration won a stay from the judge who ordered the Department of Justice to grant habeas corpus to suspected terrorists held at Bagram in Afghanistan. Acknowledging that “extraordinary circumstances” exist, Judge John Bates agreed to put aside his ruling while AG Eric Holder appeals it:
President Barack Obama has won more breathing room to revamp detainee policies after a federal judge agreed Monday to put on hold a ruling permitting legal challenges by some prisoners in U.S. custody at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.
To the chagrin of many on the left, Obama had essentially adopted the Bush administration’s position that prisoners at Bagram could not bring challenges in U.S. courts. On April 2, Judge John Bates, a Bush appointee, rejected the Bush-Obama stance, ruling that three prisoners flown into Bagram from other countries could pursue so-called habeas corpus cases seeking release.
However, Bates agreed Monday to allow the government to appeal his ruling immediately and to put the original ruling on hold while the appeal proceeds.
“These cases present extraordinary circumstances,” Bates wrote. “Although this Court believes that its conclusions are correct, given the novelty of the issues courts could reasonably differ.”
The novelty over the last few years has come from the federal judiciary. The Constitution gives them no role in waging war, especially abroad; it leaves the declaration of war to Congress and the management of it to the executive branch. Asserting a role in the explicitly military role of assessing prisoners captured on a battlefield or in intelligence operations not only creates an untenable tension between military/intelligence procedures, it also arrogantly declares a jurisdiction outside of the boundaries of the US.
Kudos to the Obama administration for sticking to the right position on this issue, but it would be nice if they acknowledged that they had it wrong during the campaign. Hopefully, the appellate court will reach the rational, historical, and Constitutional position.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
Comment pages:
Barack W. Bush?
Wanderlust on June 2, 2009 at 12:58 PM
There is no politcal value to apologizing for the mistake. The left will shower Obama with anger and the right would be a mix of pats on back and indignation that he lied to get elected.
WashJeff on June 2, 2009 at 12:59 PM
Will the trolls stay away from this thread too?
ladyingray on June 2, 2009 at 1:00 PM
Smart court. Their jurisdiction ends about 80 miles from Cuba.
seven on June 2, 2009 at 1:01 PM
You should release them. Down here RC South. Pegasus will habeas their corpus.
hawkdriver on June 2, 2009 at 1:01 PM
Yes, they were right to stick to the right position on this…but…they have consistently undermined this position with their own rhetorical demagoguery…which they still bring out, on occasion, when it suits them.
The result is a series of contradictory positions that constantly shift and add up to nothing. All Obama really wants is for the issue to go away…he’s not committed to the right outcome. So, even if they won a small, rear-guard action here…long term, they’ve lost the war.
AUINSC on June 2, 2009 at 1:01 PM
I think hawk has the solution!
ladyingray on June 2, 2009 at 1:04 PM
Boooooooooooooosh!!!! was right.
gwelf on June 2, 2009 at 1:06 PM
Good luck with that.
BadgerHawk on June 2, 2009 at 1:08 PM
The silence of the trolls is deafening this morning.
What’s that I hear? HuffPo and KOS kids heads exploding?
Knucklehead on June 2, 2009 at 1:11 PM
Only if they get a 5 minute head start and we get to see the footage.
DarkCurrent on June 2, 2009 at 1:11 PM
ROFL!!!
Troll: Bush was wrong. Obama has it right. He’s the be all, and end all, and the smarmiest…err smartest President we’ve ever had. *bows*
capejasmine on June 2, 2009 at 1:13 PM
Decisions like this make me wonder if the same judge would have done the same thing if it wasn’t Obama that was asking. In other words, was it a political decision or was Holder continuing a Bush initiated appeal and stay of decision?
Scott
shooten on June 2, 2009 at 1:16 PM
Change!
loudmouth883 on June 2, 2009 at 1:16 PM
In related news, Michelle Obama has nice arms.
BPD on June 2, 2009 at 1:17 PM
I have a question. How can the other two branches rein in the judiciary if they overstep their constitutional boundaries?
promachus on June 2, 2009 at 1:18 PM
Arrrrgh! Where is the epirate screaming with indignation about Obama “hoisting” his lies on an unsuspecting electorate?!
Vince on June 2, 2009 at 1:26 PM
The Constitution is remarkably silent on that. Impeachment?
Steve Z on June 2, 2009 at 1:26 PM
no its not…congress can rule on which cases the court can hear and not hear…the court OVERRRULED congress in Boumediene…Bush should have ignored the court…like Jackson did, tell them to stick it…
right4life on June 2, 2009 at 1:29 PM
Can someone explain to me how a non-citizen terrorist in another country has the rights of a citizen? That is one heck of a penumbra.
Vashta.Nerada on June 2, 2009 at 1:42 PM
Well since you no longer have to prove citizenship in this country, to vote….perhaps you attain those same rights, simply by putting terrorist before your name.
capejasmine on June 2, 2009 at 2:00 PM
My question as well. I suspect strongly that the this judge would not. It may be that he would have behaved the same way had it been the other way around, with Clinton setting up Gitmo and Bush requesting the say, in which case he just needed to be told something by two opposite pols. But more likely he simply was not prepared to listen to a Republican argument, but is thinking more soberly now that he sees that the candidate who agreed with him has changed his mind.
It may be good news about the case, but it’s putrid news about our judiciary. We may hope that this judge has learned his lesson, but that seems unlikely.
njcommuter on June 2, 2009 at 2:09 PM
Obama tapdances out of both sides of his mouth to win the votes of as many inattentive suckers as possible.
A winning strategy in a country of 51% uninformed guilt-riddled airheads.
This is simply one more two-faced attempt to play both sides of an issue until it is so confused that he can rely on a mocha smile and his stentorian b.s. to keep his fawning lickspittles disoriented and in line.
You cannot SUE the Supreme Court (there is no venue to TRY them) for any un-Constitutional over-reaching of their powers into the realm of war-making decisions, so impeachment is likely the only way to rein-in their follies on this issue of national security.
They and their lower court idiot colleagues have gotten away with this illegitimate nonsense and they have endangered the nation with such moronic rulings as the Boumediene case, etc. that cede rights to civilian courts and legal procedings ~and not simply the commonly prescribed military tribunals~ to terrorists in wartime or during an invasion.
9/11 was an invasion… and the war it openly declared continues.
No court has the power to declare any war over or any invasion non-existent. Only the Congress can do that.
We live in a time of Judicial Tyranny.
And a supine Congress that clearly doesn’t undertsand their own breadth of stated powers, or the Constitutional limits of the Courts’.
But the Obamas got a puppy.
profitsbeard on June 2, 2009 at 3:01 PM
Then support the Federalism Amendments.
njcommuter on June 2, 2009 at 7:37 PM
What is so ironic about this is that the federal courts quite literally have no standing in this area. A random citizen has far more standing to file suit to see Obama’s birth certificate than a district judge has to tell the president how to conduct war.
These are not citizens of the U.S., and were captured in the pursuit of war. The only person empowered to conduct war and foreign policy in the Constitution is the President.
The only way the courts can claim any power over these people, not being citizens, is by claiming jurisdiction of the Americans holding them. And since those are acting directly under the President’s authority, who is co-equal with the Supreme Court, not under it, there’s quite simply no room for any federal courts to be a court of appeal.
ThereGoesTheNeighborhood on June 2, 2009 at 11:41 PM
The proper response to rein in overreaching by the Supreme Court is for them to be stopped by the other 2 branches that are equal to it. Congress has the power at any time to restrict the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court. Unfortunately, Congress did exactly that in this case, and the Supreme Court still ruled that prisoners of war still had the right to sue for habeas corpus. What needed to happen at that point was for Bush to say, like Andrew Jackson did, “[The Supreme Court] has made [their] decision, now let [them] enforce it.” Because ultimately, if the President doesn’t enforce the Supreme Court decisions, then nothing happens after all.
It’s interesting that Congress and the President historically have clashed over their authority numerous times, but no one wants to take on the Supreme Court.
ThereGoesTheNeighborhood on June 2, 2009 at 11:57 PM
Comment pages: