On Sat, 31 Dec 2005 08:59:58 GMT, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:

Gunner Asch wrote:
On Sat, 31 Dec 2005 03:02:33 GMT, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:

Gunner Asch wrote:
On Fri, 30 Dec 2005 22:08:26 GMT, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:

Gunner Asch wrote:
On Fri, 30 Dec 2005 20:48:02 GMT, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:

Guido wrote:

Hillary, is a Liberal. A far leftist, no matter how stridently she has
tried to portray herself a centrist. Long before Bush, the Left has
tried to remove our guns, and they will try long after Bush.

Yes and they will have some dandy new tools if they can throw away any
oversight by the other branches of government.



Well you see that's the thing. Laws aren't worth much if you can't
count on them.

Sure. Ask any Leftist. They hate laws. Except their own. They try to
find workarounds for everyone elses. Like the Constitution.




Ive yet to see a credible piece of objective evidence that anyone
has lost their freedoms or privacy because of interception of
phone calls, or having their library records checked, or even as
a direct result of the Patriot Act.

Well, Jose Padilla sure did. He'd be serving a legitimate prison
sentence by now if he'd been charged timely. As it is he may walk.
Pretty ****ing stupid don't you think?

You mean Abdullah Al Muhajir?

Who?

John John John...you babble about Jose..but yet you know nothing about
him???

What's to know? If he's an American, he has rights. It really is that
simple. As near as I can tell, there isn't a showing that he has actually
done anything related to the stated reasons for his detention.

December 31, 2005
Padilla Lawyers Urge Supreme Court to Block Transfer
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 - Lawyers for Jose Padilla told the Supreme Court on
Friday that it should not grant the government's emergency request to have
him transferred from a military brig to civilian custody to face terrorism
charges in a civil court.

The lawyers acknowledged that Mr. Padilla would prefer to be in civilian
custody eventually. But they said it appeared that the only reason for the
government's rush to move him was to bolster the administration's efforts to
discourage the Supreme Court from reviewing the crucial underlying issue of
whether President Bush had the authority to detain Mr. Padilla, an American
citizen, as an enemy combatant for more than three years.

"The government had the power to transfer Padilla from physical military
custody for more than three years, yet only now does it deem swift transfer
imperative," Mr. Padilla's lawyers argued in their brief filed Friday.

They noted that the justices are scheduled to consider whether to review Mr.
Padilla's case at their private conference on Jan. 13. After that, the
lawyers said, it would be acceptable to move Mr. Padilla.

When Mr. Padilla (pronounced puh-DILL-ah) was first arrested in Chicago at
O'Hare Airport in May 2002, the authorities said he was considering a plot
to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in some American city. But in the
criminal indictment issued in November, the government made no mention of
the dirty bomb plot and instead charged him with fighting against American
forces alongside members of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The issue of Mr. Padilla's transfer is the latest development in what has
become a complicated and extraordinary legal battle, not only between the
government and Mr. Padilla, but also between the Justice Department and a
federal appeals court that has usually been a reliable supporter of Mr.
Bush's authority in the fight against terrorism.

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth
Circuit provided Mr. Bush with a sweeping victory in September, saying he
had the power to detain Mr. Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who allied
himself with radical Islamists, as an enemy combatant.

But the Bush administration said in November that it no longer needed that
authority because it had decided to charge Mr. Padilla in a civilian court.
In addition, the Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to drop its
review of the power of Mr. Bush to declare a citizen an enemy combatant,
saying the Padilla case was now moot. The appeals panel refused to agree to
transfer Mr. Padilla from military custody to civilian.

Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote in the opinion declining the transfer that the
administration appeared to be trying to manipulate the case to avoid a
Supreme Court review of the September ruling. Judge Luttig also warned that
the administration's behavior in the case could jeopardize its credibility
before the courts in other terrorism cases.

The Justice Department, in a strongly worded application to the Supreme
Court earlier this week, said the appeals court panel had overstepped its
bounds in denying Mr. Bush's request to transfer Mr. Padilla and asked the
justices to order an immediate transfer. The department asserted that Mr.
Padilla was agreeable to the transfer. On Friday, his lawyers made it clear
that they felt the government mischaracterized their views regarding the
transfer.



Why would an American citizen be shipped anywhere to be shot by the
US government?
Have I missed something?

Evidently the stroke did something to your reading comprehension.

But in November he was formally charged:

Yes, having been held for three years he was. Just before the
Supremes would have had the opportunity to rule on the legal basis
for his detention BTW. I found that interesting.

So do I. Treading right at the edge but not stepping over..mighty
tricky footwork. But then..the Enemy Combatant thing is new to all of
us.

Three years without being charged isn't treading on the edge of anything.
It's false imprisonment.
The courts are reviewing that issue right now. I'll copy the part that is
concerning here.
Keep in mind that Luttig is about as conservative a jurist as they come:

"Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote in the opinion declining the transfer that
the administration appeared to be trying to manipulate the case to avoid a
Supreme Court review of the September ruling. Judge Luttig also warned that
the administration's behavior in the case could jeopardize its credibility
before the courts in other terrorism cases."

They are going to have to has out if he is an Enemy Combatant first,
or an American first..and thats the key to everything.

Unfortunatley..or fortunately...such a situation hasnt cropped up
before in this fashion..so there is no precident to work from.




Time will tell wont it? Got $5 you want to waste?

Not really and I doubt you do either.




Either way..the little scumbag is hosed.

It might or might not happen that a lot of cases go out the window
for the lack of admissible evidence soon. How happy will you be to
see these people go free when they could have been convicted and put
away?

When he walks..Ill put $5 in an envelope and send it to you. If he
goes to the joint..send me $5. Deal?

If the courts rule his detention to be illegal he will. They might. Bush
just got slapped down on this last week and the courts are expressing
increasing concern that they will have to throw out what otherwise would be
good cases. You should be as well.

if again. You got lots of Ifs this evening.



I do have a question for you though. If Bush is so smart why in hell
isn't Saddam dead. I mean, didn't anybody in the administration
realize that his trial would be exactly the sort of mockery we don't
need? His dead body would have been a better example than what we
are seing today and Hussein has no rights. He really was the enemy.

He was indeed. But then..we generally follow the rules and simply
shooting him in the back of the head would have been against the law.

He was armed and the enemy. I don't know what "law" you are talking about
but the ROE in that instance would have equalled dead in my book.

He was captured in a hole in the ground without incident. And if we
had shot him..it would have created yet another martyr. Frankly..we
should have shot him, put him back in the hole, filled it with cement
and never told anyone. And the same goes with bin Laden. Publicly
dead..he becomes a martyr. "whereabouts unknown", he is simply a blip
on the screen. Which may well be why he hasnt been heard from in a
while...he is dead, and no one is talking. Hence..no martyrs.

Shrug..

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner