"As Warped and as Evil as It Gets."

72% of Guantanamo detainees who finally were able to obtain just minimal due process (which is what a habeas hearing is) -- after years of being in a cage without charges -- have been found by federal judges to be wrongfully detained. These are people who are part of what the U.S. Government continues to insist are "the worst of the worst" who remain, and whose release is being vehemently contested by the Obama DOJ.

That's from Glenn Greenwald's May 28 post. He reminds us that the Bush administration and Congress specifically forbade habeas corpus hearings for Guantanamo detainees, many of whom were swept up in raids in Pakistan without any evidence of wrongdoing. It took the Supreme Court to knock that prohibition out of the Military Commissions Act.

Think about what that means, what the people who voted for that (including 12 Democratic Senators) tried to do: had the Supreme Court not struck down that provision by a 5-4 vote in Boumediene, all of these innocent people would continue to be denied any rights of judicial review, and would unjustly languish in prison indefinitely. The people who voted for the Military Commissions Act, and the 4 Supreme Court Justices who sought to uphold it, knowingly acted to deny scores of innocent prisoners any opportunity for judicial review. That's as warped and as evil as it gets.

...It's commonplace to label something a travesty of justice, but who can deny that knowingly imprisoning innocent people for years and years while scheming to deny them all judicial review is a disgrace of historic proportions?

Read the full post. Individual lives have been ruined by this heartless U.S. policy. The stain on America will never be removed.

Preventive Detention?

Update: My full op-ed on this subject is at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

The New York Times reports:

[A]s Mr. Obama moves closer to assuming responsibility for Guantánamo, his pledge to close the detention center is bringing to the fore thorny questions under consideration by his advisers. They include where Guantánamo’s detainees could be held in this country, how many might be sent home and a matter that people with ties to the Obama transition team say is worrying them most: What if some detainees are acquitted or cannot be prosecuted at all?That concern is at the center of a debate among national security, human rights and legal experts that has intensified since the election. Even some liberals are arguing that to deal realistically with terrorism, the new administration should seek Congressional authority for preventive detention of terrorism suspects deemed too dangerous to release even if they cannot be successfully prosecuted. [Emphasis added.]

President-elect Obama, put a stop to this at once by categorically opposing preventive detention.

Hat tip: Jacob Hornberger, FFF

Counterpunch!

I'm pleased to report that my Future of Freedom Foundation op-ed, "Habeas Corpus Saved -- Barely," is posted on Counterpunch.

The "Stable Bulwark of Our Liberties"

The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday struck a blow for the separation of powers and dealt the Bush administration a big setback by ruling that suspects held without charge at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to contest their imprisonment under the doctrine of habeas corpus.

Simply put, the Court held that the government may not keep anyone in custody indefinitely without having to justify its actions to a judge.

The rest of this week's TGIF, "The 'Stable Bulwark of Our Liberties,'" is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

This is an extremely important decision, and the unprincipled right wing is apoplectic. Thank goodness some people in power have resisted George II's fear-mongering.

Update -- Food for thought from the great Glenn Greenwald:

Three of the five Justices in the majority -- John Paul Stevens (age 88), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (age 75) and David Souter (age 68) -- are widely expected by court observers to retire or otherwise leave the Court in the first term of the next President. By contrast, the four judges who dissented -- Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Sam Alito -- are expected to stay right where they are for many years to come.

John McCain has identified Roberts and Alito as ideal justices of the type he would nominate, while Barack Obama has identified Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Ginsberg (all in the majority today). It's not hyperbole to say that, from Supreme Court appointments alone, our core constitutional protections could easily depend upon the outcome of the 2008 election.

George II Thwarted (So Far) on Habeas Corpus

George II may not arrest a U.S. resident on U.S. soil -- citizen or not -- and hold him in a military brig without charge indefinitely. So says the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in an important 2-1 ruling yesterday. We can only hope it will be sustained on further appeal.

Contrary to the Bush administration's obnoxious autocratic position, Kahlah al-Marri (a married Bradley University student and father in the U.S. but a citizen of Qatar) has the right to file a habeas-corpus petition and the right to have any case against him handled by the civilian criminal justice system. This holds even if, as the administration charges, al-Marri is an al Qaeda "sleeper agent" who has volunteered for a "martyr mission" in the United States.

Money quote:

[T]he Government cannot subject al-Marri to indefinite military detention. For in the United States, the military cannot seize and imprison civilians -- let alone imprison them indefinitely. . . . To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the president calls them "enemy combatants," would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution -- and the country. For a court to uphold a claim to such extraordinary power would do more than render lifeless the Suspension [habeas corpus] Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the rights to criminal process in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments; it would effectively undermine all of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. . . . We refuse to recognize a claim to power that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic.

The opinion his here (pdf).

If you're watching cable TV news, you may not know about this case. The channels are too busy covering Paris Hilton's detention. I await the filing of her habeas corpus petition.