Put another way, as of last week, the Supreme Court – and more specifically, Justice Kennedy – has declared itself the final authority on making war, incarcerating enemy combatants, and, indeed, on the American people’s right to self-government.
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Until he is disabused of this notion by a Congress with the guts to assert itself, the following not only may happen, but will, and very quickly:
- Captured terrorists will refuse to answer any questions without access to a lawyer;
- Captured terrorists will demand the public disclosure of the military’s evidence against them, thus exposing the means and methods employed by our intelligence community to gather such evidence;
- Captured terrorists will demand to confront their accusers, who will be soldiers on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan, in open court back here in the states; and,
- Captured terrorists will go venue shopping, filing their habeas claims in dozens of courts in hopes of getting the most liberal activist judge they can find.
It’s kind of sad to once again be confronted with the fact that someone can serve as majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives without being familiar with Marburry vs. Madison, or the fact that habeas corpus is only the legal right to challenge your detention in court once it happens. But aside from that, there is the interesting use of the phrase “captured terrorist”. The proper phrase should be “terrorism suspect”, since terrorism is the crime they are charged with and one goes through the legal proceedings to find out if they are, in fact, a terrorist. Unless, of course, Delay is employing the term in a way specific to the Busheviks, i.e., as a substitute for “fucking sand nigger”.
I also have to love the Orwellian phraseology in Delay’s title. Apparently, defending civil liberties against government abuse counts as “judicial tyranny”. Freedom is slavery, my friends.
