More Hamdan Reaction

Matthew J. Franck:

Here are the things in which the reader is required to suspend disbelief, in order to take Stevens’s “opinion” seriously as a story of law and war:

That when Congress enacted a statute in December 2005 providing that “no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider” habeas-corpus petitions from detainees at Guantanamo, without exception or qualification, it really meant to include an exception that all detainees whose lawyers were clever enough to file petitions before the statute’s enactment could still press their claims, and the Court will act on that exception that Congress surely intended but did not say.

That when the same law gave “exclusive jurisdiction” for the review of detainees’ status, and of their trials by military commissions, to a federal appellate court, it didn’t really mean that either.

That Congress’s explicit, unquestioning references in this law to those military commissions and their trials did not indicate a legislative approval of the president’s orders creating those commissions and their trial procedures.

That the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by Congress, when it gave the president power to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against the enemies who attacked us on September 11, 2001, was intended to give no authority to the president to try combatants, captured by U.S. forces, for violations of the laws of war.

Hadley Arkes:

Time again for Tom Stoppard’s “Reporter Doll”: You wind it up — and it gets it wrong. The news of the Hamdan case broke on Thursday, and the headlines have offered an account almost the reverse of what has actually taken place. The main message, coming out quickly, was that the Court had checked an executive running beyond control, breaking past the boundaries of its powers under the Constitution and the laws. That was the version through the Looking Glass. The more sober version was that five judges, under the pretext of reining in the president, had defied the restraints that the Congress had placed, quite emphatically, on the courts.

Those restraints had been enacted precisely to keep the judges from extending their power into the domain of military judgments. More than an attack on the executive, the decision in Hamdan showed contempt for the Congress. The Court treated as a mere trifle, to be put aside, the clear power of Congress under the Constitution to grant, to shape — and to withhold — the jurisdiction of the courts. We might ask, where is the outrage from Arlen Specter, so quick to take offense on other occasions when the Court seems to be disparaging the force of reason in his legislative handiwork?

National Review:

The Supreme Court’s decision to impose by judicial fiat a treaty that no politically accountable official would dare propose — a one-sided compact wherein the United States gives elevated due process to al Qaeda’s terrorists while they continue slaughtering civilians and torturing their captives to death — is an abomination.

Yes, all true, and none of it will matter one bit. Our political "leaders" are too cowardly to bring the traitors at The New York Times to heel (hell, they won't even reference them by name in condemnatory resolutions); you can bet your life they won't have the guts to impeach the illiterate SOBs on the Supreme Court who've simply chosen to ignore the Constitution, ignore the 1942 precedent, and ignore their duty to this nation in an effort to appease the Bolshie audiences who give them the warmest ovations. They won't even impeach that old fossil Stevens, who doesn't even show up for most of the proceedings of the Court.

As those of you not educated in public schools are no doubt aware, this nation was to be governed by the President and Congress, not 9 doddering old fools and the editor and publisher of The New York Times.

I'm sure the mullahs will make some changes when they're in charge, and I can guarantee you they won't be resorting to international law or liberal pieties when they do.