US Constitution on trial today

[hork]

Here's to hoping the "law of the land" and the American way of life prevails over the bush regime and its "activist judges"

[StockTrader]

Originally Posted by hork

Here's to hoping the "law of the land" and the American way of life prevails over the bush regime and its "activist judges"

Directly from the article:

The justices ruled against the administration in the two earlier cases.

Nick

[StockTrader]

Now, as for this part:

"Guantanamo Bay is in every practical respect a United States territory," Kennedy said in the earlier ruling.

I wonder how Cuban's feel about this comment. Hell, let's just go ahead and claim Germany, Kuwait and Iraq. No need to stop with Guantanamo Bay ..

Nick

[hork]

Originally Posted by StockTrader

Now, as for this part:



I wonder how Cuban's feel about this comment. Hell, let's just go ahead and claim Germany, Kuwait and Iraq. No need to stop with Guantanamo Bay ..

Nick

actually though Gitmo is and has always been US property. It was ceded to the US as a provision of the Cuban-American Treaty of 1903.

Of course the Castro government argues the treaty was illegal as it was signed under the threat of and result of force but the land title is held by the US, has been for the past 104 years, and is officially recognized by the US Federal government as a territory of the United States. Hence, all protections afforded under the Constitution would extend to Gitmo as well.

[ldzppln]

Originally Posted by hork

... the land title is held by the US, has been for the past 104 years, and is officially recognized by the US Federal government as a territory of the United States. Hence, all protections afforded under the Constitution would extend to Gitmo as well.

But 9/11 changed everything, right?

The following article on this same subject is in today's Washington Post:

Evidence Of Innocence Rejected at Guantanamo

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 5, 2007; Page A01

Just months after U.S. Army troops whisked a German man from Pakistan to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002, his American captors concluded that he was not a terrorist.

"USA considers Murat Kurnaz's innocence to be proven," a German intelligence officer wrote that year in a memo to his colleagues. "He is to be released in approximately six to eight weeks."

But the 19-year-old student was not freed. Instead, over the next four years, two U.S. military tribunals that were responsible for determining whether Guantanamo Bay detainees were enemy fighters declared him a dangerous al-Qaeda ally who should remain in prison.

The disparity between the tribunal's judgments and the intelligence community's consensus view that Kurnaz is innocent is detailed in newly released military and court documents that track his fate. His attorneys, who sued the Pentagon to gain access to the documents, say that they reflect policies that result in mistreatment of the hundreds of foreigners who have been locked up for years at the controversial prison.

The Supreme Court intends to weigh the legitimacy of the military tribunals at a hearing this morning. Lawyers for Kurnaz and other detainees plan to argue that the panels violate the U.S. Constitution and international law. They say that the proceedings have not provided Guantanamo Bay detainees with a fair and impartial hearing.

Lawyers for the Bush administration will argue that the tribunals have afforded suspected enemies all the rights to which they are entitled. The administration maintains that detainees need not know all of the evidence against them. The tribunals were established in 2004 after the Supreme Court ruled that such panels are needed when holding prisoners indefinitely, and Congress endorsed them in 2005.

U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green, who was privy to the classified record of the tribunal's decision-making about Kurnaz in 2004, concluded in January 2005 that his treatment provided powerful evidence of bias against prisoners, and she deemed the proceedings illegal under U.S. and international law. But her ruling, which depicted the allegations against Kurnaz as unsubstantiated and as an inappropriate basis for keeping him locked up, was mostly classified at the time.

In newly released passages, however, Green's ruling reveals that the tribunal members relied heavily on a memo written by a U.S. brigadier general who noted that Kurnaz had prayed while the U.S. national anthem was sung in the prison and that he expressed an unusual interest in detainee transfers and the guard schedule. Other documents make clear that U.S. intelligence officials had earlier concluded that Kurnaz, who went to Pakistan shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to visit religious sites, had simply chosen a bad time to travel.

<cont.>

[StockTrader]

Originally Posted by hork

actually though Gitmo is and has always been US property. It was ceded to the US as a provision of the Cuban-American Treaty of 1903.

I did not know that, thank you for enlightening me.

Nick

[P562045]

Originally Posted by hork

actually though Gitmo is and has always been US property.

This is rather fascinating to me because I thought I heard the media go on and on and on about Bush put the prisoners down at Gitmo in the first place so they would not be able to be touched by a U.S. court.

Well that has to be bogus report by the media because the supreme court has already ruled on cases about the prisoners at Gitmo already.

So what is the real reason the prisoners at Gitmo are there in the first place there media?

[hork]

Originally Posted by P562045

This is rather fascinating to me because I thought I heard the media go on and on and on about Bush put the prisoners down at Gitmo in the first place so they would not be able to be touched by a U.S. court.

Well that has to be bogus report by the media because the supreme court has already ruled on cases about the prisoners at Gitmo already.

So what is the real reason the prisoners at Gitmo are there in the first place there media?

and you'll notice how the white house and the then ruled GOP congress passed legislation making it illegal for the US courts to rule on cases involving gitmo. so where's the problem with the media's reporting? seems pretty accurate to me.

[P562045]

Let me get this straight the U.S. supreme court is hearing a case about prisoners that are in a U.S. territory?

So please someone explain why these prisoners at Gitmo have not had there day in court yet after six plus years?

Well this article from late September of last year tries to explain that very point I just asked about. To make it easy I am going to just quote a portion of the article.

Included in the bill, passed by Republican majorities in the Senate yesterday and the House on Wednesday, are unique rules that bar terrorism suspects from challenging their detention or treatment through traditional habeas corpus petitions.

Article Here

I just love for the media to have very selective scrutiny of what the congress does. This fails to mention that pesky little thing called cloture that the minority in the senate can stop practically anything it wants like it doing as we speak right Washington Post?

Now the question becomes where in the heck were the people when this was being done?



I seem to remember that this was mentioned barely when this bill passed through the congress when it happened but I seem to remember only a little bit of reaction about why these prisoners are not getting their day in court in a timely fashion [amendment 5] but I was probably so wrapped up in who these people are in the first place at Gitmo that that clouded my thinking somewhat about this whole matter of why should they get a day in court and not be detained indefinitely because the law now says in effect that they can not file habeas corpus petitions.

I may go try to find what we said about this if it is not to difficult to find on the old forums.

[hork]

search for posts started by me, wjobsports, and exjersey. all three of us were all over this and the three of us along with steve, kev, jt, sayow, and a few others battled about this many many times.

i'm still trying to figure out where you're coming to the conclusion that the media was selective in its reporting. this was HUGE news when it happened and each time cases were brought to court.

in the end it was always the same, the courts ruled against the administration, then their cronies in congress enacted legislation to give the white house a blank check to do what it will. i'm a bit curious as to how you missed it when every news agency across the world had it as front page news on more than one occasion.

[P562045]

Originally Posted by hork

i'm still trying to figure out where you're coming to the conclusion that the media was selective in its reporting.

Because the media forgot to mention that the minority in 2006 could have used cloture but chose not to because this would have passed anyway because there were enough democrats by the actual vote in the senate [65 yeahs] to make cloture a moot point anyway .

But my article goes out of its way to report that this passed only because of the evil republican congress wanted it to and it was a great desire of this president to get this done but it barely mentions as an afterthought the handful of democrats that supported this in the senate by their actual vote in the senate but that is not really important at all; but it was important because there were enough democrats in the senate that this would have passed the senate anyway even if there was a cloture vote but it would not have survived cloture if those handful of democrats did not vote for cloture.

So of course now the democrats are running around boo hooing on the suspension of habeas corpus in these particular cases of terrorists but by looking at the actual vote in the senate the democrats would have made sure that this got to the president anyway but of course as my article says this is only the fault of those evil republicans in the senate just last year and only a handful of democrats supported it in the senate. Well those handful of senators in the senate could have decided wether or not cloture would have passed the senate or not but cloture was not even considered by the democrats even though now and even then it this is so so evil. If it was so evil why did the democrats not at least try cloture because that could have stopped this thing dead in its tracks or not? A handful of democrat senators could have made sure this never got to the senate floor because this would have never survived a cloture vote if every democrat sticked together on this matter but there were at least a handful of democrats that thought this was a good idea in the senate but of course this is of course the fault of the evil republican congress at the time only and a handful of democrats had absolutely no bearing on did this piece of legislation get to the president or not.

[P562045]

We mentioned this more than once but I found this thread to start us off with.

I had forgotten why 8 out 12 democrats voted for this evil thing in the senate they were running for reelection last year oh how convenient. It is probably just a coincidence though or so they would say now.

Thread Here

I will try to find more threads about this tomorrow if I remember.