Look, Bricker. It’s clear that you are the ONLY PERSON who wasn’t shocked as hell by what Gonzales said–including Spector, who almost falls out of his chair at the statement. Spector clearly sees Gonzales’ statement as meaning, “no US citizen is granted Habeas by the Constitution,” not “the Constitution doesn’t grant Habeas to these non-citizen detainees.”
If the very person that Gonzales was having the conversation with thinks this, I don’t think you really have any grounds to argue that we are all being too persnickety and reading too much into the AG’s language. If the Attorney General of the United States made a verbal misstep that was that serious, in a setting that was that serious, he needs to go back to college for some basic Speech Communications classes. I sure as hell wouldn’t want him as my attorney.
Personally, I find it much more likely that he meant exactly what he said–that the Constitution grants no explicit rights of HC to anyone, citizen or no.
Which is a fact that is so elementary, so moronically basic, that its strains credibility to think that’s what he is actually saying, Bricker.
I don’t think his opinion of Specter is so low that he’d feel it necessary to tell him that water is wet. Do you? So why do you think he’s essentially telling that to him here?
Spector was saying that the opinion rested on Constitutional grounds, and it obviously does not, despite Spector’s claim of having just read the opinion. I’m not sure what level of confidence Gonzales would have had in Spector’s discernment at that point, but his comment was akin to something we might say to each other here… “The Court didn’t say the detainees had Constitutional habeas rights. Not everyone on the planet has them, you know!”
Yeah, OK. I’m not, actually, the only person that thinks this. And Spector may have been confused, but Spector, who “just read” the opinion, thought it stated a constitutional rule. I wouldn’t line up my forces behind the amazing intellectual prowess and recall of A. Spector on this issue.
Pity the Framers could not have expressed themselves in simple, direct terms such that years of training would not be required to parse out the meaning.
Except he didn’t say that or anything like that. Quick play back of a key exchange.
(bolding mine)
Why, if he’s arguing what you are saying, did he talk about the folks who indeed ARE protected by the constitution without making even a passing reference to those millions of people outside of the US who are not? Trust me, I’d agree with you if he said anything remotely like “…the Constitution doesn’t say that everyone in the world is granted habeas.” Instead, he chose to say essentially that the Consitution doesn’t grant anyone habeas. The “simply says” part of his comment speaks volumes. His intent is to downplay the right of habeas–and not its applicability–as implied by the Constitution.
To insist on your interpretation is to completely ignore what he is actually saying in favor of what you think he should be saying. Problem is, he’s not saying anything anywhere close to that.
Bricker: Having thought about this a bit this AM, I believe your analysis is incorrect (although “incomplete” might be a more accurate term).
While I agree that we need to take AG’s comment in context, there is more context here than just the back-and-forth exchange between AG and AS. We know for a fact that the Bush administration has tried to detain US citizens indefinitely and has argued that the prez has that authority as long as he designates them “illegal enemy combatants” (or whatever term they use these days). Witness Hamdi and Padilla, the latter being detained on US soil even.
So, I don’t believe that AG or Bush think that Bush has the authority to suspend the great writ across the board, but I do think they believe they can deny it in individual cases, and even when those cases involved US citizens on US soil. That, to me, is an eyebrow raising legal argument that strains the constitution beyond reasonable interpretation. But that is how I would explain AG’s remarks during that Senate hearing.
Yes, I’m asking you in all sincerity. In fact, I don’t see what in my question would strike you as insincere. I can only conclude that I have misunderstood something elementary in your argument. I assure you that I have done so while attempting to understand it in good faith. I honestly give you the benefit of the doubt. I think it more likely that I either misunderstood your statements or you misspoke somehow than that I have revealed some lurking contradiction in your world view that will bring it crashing down.
However, as they stand, your statements appear flatly to contradict each other. On the one hand, you say that the Constitution grants the right of habeas corpus. On the other hand, you say that Gonzales is technically correct to deny that the Constitution does this, and you said that this was true even if his comments were not considered in a context restricted to, say, non-citizens in Cuba. How is it that you understand these statements of yours to be reconcilable? I don’t doubt that you have a reasonable reply. I just don’t know what it is. Hence the question.
When I say “technically,” I mean it literally, hypertechnically. Taking the exact meaning of his words, what he says is literally true. The Constitution contains no words that say, “Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.” You cannot point to ink on the paper of the Constitution that forms those words.
Now, that’s obviously a ridiculous games. But so is the idea of taking Gonzales’ words out of the context of his conversation with Spector. Hence my point: if you wish to be hypertechnical, pointing only to Gonzales’ words and nothing else to claim that the AG misunderstands a fundamental tenent of the Constitution, then I disagree: hypertechnically, his words are literally true. But that’s a foolish question to ask; a foolish standard to propose. A better standard would be: what, in the context of his discussion of the Supreme Court case with the Senator, did his words mean?
Why do you begin your “key exchange” there? Why not begin it with this statement:
THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT THE CASE.
THAT is the “key portion” of the exchange. That is the subject under discussion, the gravamen, the focal point, of the conversation. Why didn’t he say “…people in the world…” instead of what he said? Because he knew, and the guy he was talking to knew, that he was discussing the Supreme Court case, which Spector inexplicably believed was based on the Constitution and which Gonzales KNEW was not.
So, without referring to any other cases in specific, and without indicating by any particular means that he had left the subject of the particular Court case they were discussing a moment ago, the Attorney General just decided to throw in some commentary on other cases or policies or procedures the administration was pursuing?
Are we missing another page of transcripts where he suddenly starts talking about his love for bread pudding or the insightfulness of the collected works of Increase Mather?
Yup. Else they would have written: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, nor shall any State make or enforce any law that restricts the right of Women to abortion during the first three months of pregnancy.”
But they didn’t. We needed people with years of training to suss that meaning out of the Constitution, didn’t we? And I know you’re just sick about it.
You may, if you insist, believe that Alberto is engaged in a noble struggle to protect and defend the Constitution. For myself, I believe he is engaged in an effort to obfuscate and deflect. You may regard this view as naive and simplistic, but I am but a country boy, and this is the sort of thing I was taught to scrape off my shoes.
Actually, he did indicate that he had left the subject of *Rasul *once he introduced “citizens” into the discussion. Rasul does not deal with citizens:
Emphasis added. Besides, he didn’t say “this case” or “that decision”, he said “the constitution”.
The question is did he say “X” and he did he literally mean “X”. Well, we’ve established the he said “X” and we know from his actions (not sure if they are previous or subsequent) that he does believe “X”, so I see no need to interpret the words to mean “Y”.
Further evidence that AG was not talking about *Rasul *when he made that remark:
It would help if we had more of the transcript, but it appears that AS is actually talking about 2 things at once. 1) The decision in *Rasul *(which he did get wrong) and the 2) The text of the constition. Note (emphasis added):
Note that AG responds by saying:
What are those “couple things”?
Rasul was not decided on constitutional grounds, but on statutory grounds.
The constitution itself does not grant “Every individual in the United States or every citizen” the right of habeas corpus.
So it looks to me that both individuals are talking about both subjects simultaneously. Again, though, it would be nice to see how the conversation went prior to the transcript we have. I looked around but couldn’t find more.
Now, we might consider whether or not AG misspoke when he inserted the word “citizen” into his answer. That’s certainly possible. But I don’t think it really matters, because even if he didn’t say so here, we know for a fact that he thinks the president can deny a US citizen the right (or privilege) of habeas corpus so long as the president declares that person an “illegal enemy combatant”.