Our country was founded with three equal branches of government: the judicial branch, the legislative branch and the executive branch. The Constitution granted certain privileges to each branch and was careful to separate those duties as the country's founders saw fit.
That effort by our country's founders was overthrown yesterday when the Supreme Court usurped the powers of both the legislative and the executive branches. The swing vote, as has become the norm in this court's decisions, was Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Justice Kennedy's vote means that non-citizens captured in the war on terror are to be granted the rights of habeas corpus heretofore granted solely to U.S. citizens. Habeas corpus is the right of American citizens to challenge detention by the government. This case involved a captured Algerian native who has been in Guantanamo Bay for several years. He has never contested the finding of the military tribunal that he is an enemy combatant. His attorney, to the contrary, has only asserted his supposed right to have a habeas corpus hearing in a federal court.
There are likely attorneys queued up this morning filing motions that can lead to the release of these enemy combatants based on the court's decision. There can be questions posed that the government will feel cannot be answered on the grounds that the answers would give away intelligence sources or techniques. If the questions are not answered, then the enemy combatant can be released.
Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, as pointed out in the Wall Street Journal's editorial this morning, contains the clause that says: "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the Public Safety may require it."
So, we see the liberal members of the supreme court aligned on the issue. They see the Constitution as something to be twisted to meet their world view at the time. The Constitution does not impact non-citizens. It does permit habeas corpus to be suspended in the case of 'invasion'.
The man in question is not a U.S. citizen. The country was 'invaded' when the terrorists attacked the trade towers and killed 3,000 people on a single morning in September. That was but one instance of attacks that had gone on for some time.
We are not involved in legal semantics; we are involved in the fight for our continued freedoms. And now, it appears the terrorists have opened a new front in the fight located in Washington, D.C. with its allies in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The left is hung up on what it claims is the "Bush War"; this is an American War and it has dire implications if we should lose the war. We have been safe in America since 9/11 for a reason; that reason is that we are taking the fight to the terrorists and not sitting on our haunches waiting for their next attack as had been happening through-out the 1990s and into the early 2000s.
Congress must step up to the plate, pass new legislation and take any semblance of ambivalence out of the language. There must be three equal branches. We simply cannot permit one branch being more equal than the others...no matter which 'side' has the voting advantage. Politics has to stop when the welfare of our country is at stake...and it is at stake!
