The Corner’s Ramesh Ponnuru reports:
So if this is correct, the leading candidate for the GOP nomination thinks the President should be able to lock up Americans without any sort of review, but would only use this power ‘infrequently.’ And another prominent candidate would need to check with lawyers before making up his mind.
Ummm, dudes: ever hear of the Magna Carta? Habeas Corpus??
The GOP used to claim it was for limited government. Now? Not so much.
“I do state, but not under oath, that I will generally execute the office of President of the United States, and will for the most part, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States as I see fit and subject to the advise of my legal staff.”
Ah, but they never claimed they were for limited authority, did they? Huh? Huh?
Anyway, since when does the President get to arrest people at all? I’d insist he at least go through Police Academy first.
The worst part is that both Romney and Giuliani are, on that point, civil-libertarian ideologues compared to the POTUS we’ve got now.
Hey, you weren’t supposed to make a transcript of that!
How do the other Prez candidates (McCain, Hillary, Obama) answer this question?
I can at least sort of respect the arguments behind holding non-citizens in places like Gitmo under the “enemy combatant” status. I certainly don’t agree with it, but I can at least see how someone could argue for it without completely wiping their ass with the constitution.
But claiming the authority to arrest citizens without due process really is indefensible, it’s doing something that’s specifically forbidden.
I don’t care which party they belong to or what other postitions the other guy might have, I’ll vote for just about anyone else before I vote for someone who has basically been asked whether they would obey the constitution as president and answered in the negative.
The context is citizens who are enemy combatants.
I remind the board that the uber-Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, faced this situation with an American citizen who had returned to Germany and then came to America again to commit acts of sabotage. The position of his administration was that the controlling aspect of his case was his status as an enemy combatant, not his protections due as a citizen. The Supreme Court agreed, and that man was hanged.
At the very least, this complicates the case law.
:rolleyes:
Would it be too much to ask for a Cite to what Rudy said and the actual context. This looks like a bullshit slam to me.
Who the hell is Ramesh Ponnuru and why should I care about an uncited and unsupport paragraph by him?
Jim
The Hamdi case overturned that decision, no?
Looks like it modified it, but ex parte Quirin hasn’t been overturned.
He’s author of The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life, and a senior editor of the National Review.
IOW, he’s right in the mainstream of the wingnutocracy.
Could you be specific about the applicability of Quirin here? Did Roosevelt claim a right to hold them without any judicial review of the validity of doing so, and did Quirin uphold that? Because it says here that the Quirin defendants were able to seek review, and were represented by counsel in so doing.
Kind of reminds me of the Simpsons episode that shows the future with Lisa as president. Her head security guard (Nelson) reminds her that “Come on, every president gets three secret murders. If you don’t use them by the end of the term, then pfft, they’re gone.”
The Quirin defendants were tried by military commission. The validity of those military commissions were upheld by the Supreme Court, and most of the defendants were hanged.
Where this impacts on the current case is with the case of Herbert Haupt, one of the saboteurs. He was a naturalized American citizen before returning to his native Germany and becoming an agent for the Abwehr.
So basically, if you take up arms against your country and are then captured as an unlawful combatant, you aren’t entitled the full protections of the courts granted to normal criminal defendants. You ceded those by your actions.
Now, nobody supposes that you aren’t entitled to some protections under the law, many of which are guaranteed by treaty obligations entered into by us and by that tribunal process that is by now pretty well established, and which we are now trying to make more applicable to current conditions. But the case law here cannot be ignored, and neither can the fact that the criminal courts aren’t appropriate to try these cases, even on the rare instance where a citizen might be involved.
A well run tribunal system ought to be the goal here.
With all due respect, Mr. Moto, you are not responding to the issue posed by the OP:
The question was whether the President should be able to order an arrest with no review by the courts, which Messrs. Romney and Guiliani waffled on.
You cite Ex parte Quirin. However, as I read that case, it certainly does not support the postion taken by either Romney or Guiliani. In Quirin, both the lower federal court and the Supreme Court reviewed executive detention and trial by military commission, via an application the detainees brought for habeas corpus. The federal court and the Supreme Court both dismissed the applications on their merits, but they expressly affirmed that the courts had jurisdiction to review the detention by the executive.
The federal government argued that the detention was unreviewable:
So you have the government arguing for unreviewable executive detention. And the Court rejected it, upholding the courts’ jurisdiction to review the detention by executive order and to examine whether or not the detainees were within the jurisdiction of the military tribunals
So as I read Ex parte Quirin, it stands against the waffling positions taken by Messrs. Romney and Guiliani.
By your post, you indicate that it is a given that everyone is entitled to some protections under the law. But again, the question posed was a power of the president to detain an American citizen without any review. So you appear to be supporting the OP by your arguments and case citations.
Exactly. Correct me if I’m wrong, but AFAICT there needs to be, and still is, a right to a judicial determination that that is in fact what you’ve done, before you’re stripped of those protections. You can’t just do it on the government’s say-so, or else they can imprison whoever they damned well please, for whatever reasons they damned well please.
That’s the issue here: Giuliani apparently wants that power, and Romney doesn’t seem to think it’s out of the question.
And what Northern Piper said. Very nice post.
Oh yeah? Well what if your neighbor has a nucular weapon what about THAT! I guess a librul like you won’t be happy until your city is a smoking radioactive CRATER! Do you really want to block the police from preventing a bad guy from shoving a fistful of Anthrax up your BUTT! Why would you WANT that! WHY! Love it or leave it, pinko SCUM!
huh huh huh, BUTT
Your *alleged * actions. So Quirin did away with “innocent until proven guilty” as well? All I have to do is accuse you of terrorism, and your rights are suspended?
I’m afraid your tu quoque argument isn’t of much help. Constitutions protect civil liberties from all governments, not just when a party you disagree with is in power. Civil rights assume that all governments need to be kept in check, not just the governments you disagree with.
As usual, Mr. Madison puts it well:
The protections of the Bill of Rights are there to protect citizens, regardless whether the President of the day is a Dem, or a Pubbie, or a Whig, or a Federalist…and pointing to the example of a president from another party pushing against civil rights just helps to show that those civil rights need to be vigourously defended in all cases, even if you support most of the policies of the current incumbent of the White House.