The Tide Continues to Turn - EDITED

Supreme Court rules against administration on Guantanamo lockup

SUPREME COURT (AP) - The Supreme Court is siding with Guantanamo Bay detainees over the Bush administration.

The high court has ruled that President Bush overstepped his authority in creating military war crimes trials for hundreds of Guantanamo inmates.

In a defeat for both the administration and for some of the president's aggressive anti-terror policies, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the opinion which says the proposed tribunals are illegal under U-S law and the Geneva conventions.

Two years ago, the court rejected Bush's claim to the authority to detain terrorism suspects and indefinitely deny them access to courts or lawyers.

This case focused on a Yemeni inmate who worked as a driver for Osama bin Laden. He's spent four years at Guantanamo, facing a single count of conspiring against U-S citizens.

Thank the Gods!

Setting aside the very simple question of if the Bush administration has nothing to hide, why do they want to conduct these trials in secret?… ;)

EDIT: Maybe to hide stuff like this.

I love this country, I love being American. The principal reason I love being American is because the country was created with the best of intentions, the highest ideals of government in mind (though not entirely successful at the time of it’s creation, vis-avis, “the serpent under the table” slavery, but we fixed that after a few years), The idea that the freedoms and wellbeing of the people can be maintained under a just government. The most basic freedom any human being has from being snatched off the street and either just being thrown into prison indefinitely at the governments whim and “tried” secretly where no evidence is brought before the publics’ eye, no defense attorneys, no jury of peers.

In 1973, Augusto Pinochet at the head of the Chilean military took the Chilean presidential palace by force, dissolved their governing body and began the rule of a Junta, a military dictatorship. In the 17 years that followed, it is estimated that over 3,000 people became “Desaparecidos”; “the ones who have disappeared” They were arrested and never seen again. 2,095 have been confirmed as dead, another 1,102 are still missing. Stalin, Mao Tze-Tung, Hussein, every tyrant in the world employs arbitrary arrest and military tribunals closed to the public. Since the dictators are the heads of the military the defendant has been pronounced guilty of being an enemy of the state long before they were arrested, the tribunals a formality of paperwork. The tens of thousands of people arrested by the Committee for Public Safety and sent to the Guillotine after the French Revolution were processed through closed “Revolutionary Tribunals”.

Having suffered arbitary arrest and indefinate imprisonment themselves at the hands of the British, one of the first things the Founding Fathers placed in our Constitution was contained in Article one, section nine: “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.” In other words evidence had to be presented to the court to prove that the person in question was being rightfully detained.

The states themselves then demanded that the 6th Amendment be passed in the Bill of Rights: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.” This guaranteed that American citizens could never be arbitrarily arrested and thrown in jail by a government wishing to control the populace as Pinochet’s regime did in Chile.

Whether or not the people at Guantanamo bay are guilty or not is beside the point, what was at stake here was opening the door to tyranny on our own soil. Whether or not there was a precedent set that allowed the government to push the scope of its power ever further into our lives and most basic freedoms: The right to disagree with our government free from knowing we will never become one of the ones who disappeared.

If an American commits a crime on forgiegn soil, he is tried by the nation who's laws he broke. If an vistor to the U.S. commits a crime here, they are tried by our courts. Either the Afghan and Iraqi prisoners of Guantanamo are POW's and must be tried for war crimes (and taking up arms against an invading force does not qualify as a war crime) or they are citizen-criminals and must return to their native countries to be tried for crimes by their government. (Read more on the legality of their sitution here under "Prosecution".) Someday, we will have to stop sitting on the fence and every second we delay that decision merely increases resentment against the hypocracy the Bush adminstration has pushed the United States into.

Speaking of Freedom...

Bear Flees for 2nd Time Before Neutering

He said the bear bashed a nearly 400-pound steel door off its four bolts, destroyed an electrical box while tearing through two electric fences and scrambled over a 12-foot fence anchored with 2 feet of steel below ground.

Life, Liberty and to keep one's cajones!

Go Boo!