At Least The Minority Is Competing For Something
The Stakes in Roberts's Nomination (Bruce Shapiro, The Nation, via Brothers Judd)
To understand Judge Roberts's unique appeal, forget for a moment "conservative," "textualist," "original intent" and the other shorthand with which get-ahead Republican law school grads watermark their résumés. Look instead at a single case decided by Judge Roberts and two other members of the DC Court of Appeals less than a week ago. As it happened, the day before that ruling was released, President Bush interviewed Judge Roberts at the White House. Judge Roberts, it is widely reported, aced his interview; but his appeals court decision due for publication just twenty-four hours later--about the rights of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay--was, in effect, the essay question.
Here is the question: Do the obligations of the Geneva Conventions apply to prisoners seized in Afghanistan? And can the President convene military trials, unreviewable by any courts and Congress? The case involves Salim Ahmed Hamdan, allegedly a driver for Osama bin Laden, captured on the post-9/11 battlefield and held in Camp Delta. Last year a federal judge shut down Hamdan's trial and up to a dozen other military tribunals. As convened by the Pentagon, those drumhead tribunals, wrote the lower court, amounted to a violation of the Geneva Treaty and an unconstitutional seizure of power by the President.
Whatever Judge Roberts's performance in his interview with the President, whatever his sterling report card as litigator and jurist, we can be sure there was only one acceptable answer to the Guantánamo essay question, and the judge gave it. He voted, along with his two appeals court colleagues, all three of them Reagan or Bush appointees, against Geneva Convention protections for Guantánamo captives, in scathing language ordering the military tribunals forward, empowering the President, and the President alone, to determine those prisoners' fate.
I've seen enough from local Republican types today that I feel justified in continuing to call my party the Stupid Party (as I have for some time), but if any Democrats actually try to stall the nomination of John Roberts on the basis that we're being mean to terrorists, they're going to win the title of Stupid Party hands down.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 07/20/05 20:33 | American Politics | Technorati
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Think of all those Danger Train riders, Kevin. It's bad enough their lives are in danger, but no french fries?
Posted by Tom Hanna @ 21:22 on 07/20/05
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