SCOTUS Dissents

[Kablooie]

Chief Justice John Roberts, in dissent:
``Today the court strikes down as inadequate the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants. The political branches crafted these procedures amidst an ongoing military conflict, after much careful investigation and thorough debate. The court rejects them today out of hand, without bothering to say what due process rights the detainees possess, without explaining how the statute fails to vindicate those rights, and before a single petitioner has even attempted to avail himself of the law's operation. And to what effect? The majority merely replaces a review system designed by the people's representatives with a set of shapeless procedures to be defined by federal courts at some future date.''

``The critical threshold question in these cases, prior to any inquiry about the writ's scope, is whether the system the political branches designed protects whatever rights the detainees may possess. If so, there is no need for any additional process, whether called 'habeas' or something else.''

Justice Antonin Scalia, in dissent:
``The game of bait-and-switch that today's opinion plays upon the nation's commander in chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed. That consequence would be tolerable if necessary to preserve a time-honored legal principle vital to our constitutional republic. But it is this court's blatant abandonment of such a principle that produces the decision today.''

``Today the court warps our Constitution in a way that goes beyond the narrow issue of the reach of the Suspension Clause. ... It blatantly misdescribes important precedents ... It breaks a chain of precedent as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into detentions of aliens abroad ... And, most tragically, it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner. The nation will live to regret what the court has done today.''

---

[mythyc]

1. Boy does Chimpie ever know how to choose em

Roberts and Scalia are just as criminal as the whole damn Bush administration is .... :grr:

[MadMaddie]

2. Yes and just as simple minded as the *...

[CTLawGuy]

3. So they KNOW these guys are all "bad people"

but they can't and shouldn't have to prove it to an independent body.

Am I the only one who sees something wrong with that logic?

[unkachuck]

4. hey, fat tony....

"The nation will live to regret what the court has done today."

....you're wrong!....the nation will live to celebrate what the court has done today....

....however, the nation will live to regret what you slimy bastards did in 2000....

[Kablooie]

5. These guys don't talk about the constitution at all. Just what difficulties it will cause.

I thought their job was checking constitutionality. Not judging how difficult a decision will make someone elses job.

[Gold Metal Flake]

6. Think about this...

Imagine the contorted, wild bad-smell faces the four fucks will wear when the new Obama-selected and Democratically-controlled congress-approved Justices take their seats. They will be young. The aging Opus Dei Fascists will continue to rot in their irrelevancy, histories road bumps.

Fuck yeah!

[TexasObserver]

7. the evil FOUR despise constitutional freedoms

Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas

Four evil bastards.