SUPREME COURT RULES FOR HABEAS CORPUS AT GITMO

[LaWood]

Terrorism suspects who are being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to contest their detention in federal courts, according to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"The justices, voting 5-4, said a 2006 law unconstitutionally stripped Guantanamo prisoners of the right to file so-called habeas corpus petitions," Bloomberg News reports. "The majority rejected arguments that a system of limited judicial review set up by Congress was adequate to protect inmate rights."

The Associated Press notes in its bulletin that this is the third time that the high court has ruled in favor of the 270 terrorism suspects who are being held without charge at the U.S. military facility.

Lyle Denniston, a veteran legal correspondent, writes at SCOTUSblog that the ruling is a "stunning blow to the Bush Administration in its 'war-on-terrorism policies."

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/20 ... urt-r.html

(Link to the decision is posted at the above site.)

[Betsy]

And Bush of course said he didn't agree with the decision, furthering making the case for his impeachment...

[Dardedar]

DAR

U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey says the Supreme Court’s decision on Guantanamo detainees won’t affect military trials against enemy combatants.

Mukasey, speaking Friday at a Group of Eight meeting of justice and home affairs ministers, said he was disappointed with the decision.

But he told reporters it won’t affect military trials to be held at the U.S. naval facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. LINK

[Dardedar]

LETTER (to the Arkansas Demo Gazette) FROM JUDGE WENDELL GRIFFEN

Entire letter here.

***
Excerpt:

"As I approach the end of my service on the Arkansas Court of Appeals, I take special pleasure in seeing the Supreme Court remind the Bush administration and reassure the rest of our nation and the world that the highest and first obligation of every public official, including the President of the United States, is to support and defend the Constitution. As Justice Kennedy indicated in his majority opinion in Boumediene, if the government will not or cannot do that, none of us are safe from tyrannical government. In the first instance, it is the business of the executive branch to ensure that government does not conduct itself in tyrannical ways. In the last instance, it is always the solemn and noble job of courts and judges to entertain and decide the merits of allegations of such executive misconduct, even when the allegations are made by non-citizens who have been detained outside the territorial borders of the United States in what appears to have been a deliberate effort to deny them access to due process of law.

I predict that the Bush administration will be remembered as the most disrespectful toward due process and the rule of law in modern U.S. history. It remains to be seen whether Senator McCain will be remembered for having helped to enable the administration's disrespect for the rule of law and due process."

Arkansas Democrat Gazette

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Just remember this was a 5-4 decision - and work like hell to get Obama in the White House (and a strong Senate majority).