What I want to know is what the fuck Bush, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and the gang are going to do when the courts begin to release the terror suspects they have been successfully detaining so far?
Yes, they have arguable legal theories on why these folks should be locked up. I’m no Constitutional scholar, but it seems like there’s no way in hell that all of their theories will stand up when they are tested in the courts. Maybe some of them will fly, but you know that that a bunch of them will get shot down.
What that means is that some of the detainees will be released, with their convictions (if any) overturned. In fact, to the extent that the government keeps trying to question the suspects (particularly the U.S. citizens) without access to lawyers, they’re almost guaranteeing that when they go to trial, scads of the evidence they gather will be thrown out when they get to trial.
Rather than putting the long-term safety of the country first, by doing everything they can to follow established procedures that lead to convictions, they’re taking every possible short cut in the interest of current expediency and political gain.
If it were merely the administration being embarassed I wouldn’t really give a shit. But what this means is that some real terrorists will be released.
What’ll really piss me off is that the administration will blame the judiciary when this happens. Rather then owning up and admiting they were overreaching (which anyone with any sense of Constitutional law can see, whether you agree with the administration or not), they’ll blame the courts for “endangering homeland security” or some such horseshit.
I think the courts would bend over backwards to meet any reasonable requests the government has for national security. After all, judges are just as worried about terrorism as everyone else. Unfortunately, the administration is going so far out of bounds with what they’re doing, they’re setting it up so they can’t help but get their dicks chopped off.
