Law trumps Bush Politics

Here’s something you don’t hear enough of lately… strong Conservative voices speaking truth about the current US Administration’s policies rather than simply towing the party line.

Today, the 4th Circuit Court of a Appeal rapped George Bush’s knuckles for saying one thing yet doing another.

The issue at hand is the holding of suspected terrorist Jose Padilla. Apparently, the US 4th Circuit Court is none too happy that they were brought the case, not because they were an institute of law, but rather because the US Administration thought they’d have an easy in to get their way.

And why wouldn’t the Administration think so? After all, one of the judges on the court, and the man who wrote todays ruling, is former Supreme Court Justice shortlistee Michael Luttig.

Yet Mr. Luttig had this to say today:

….In a plea that was notable given that the government had held Padilla militarily for three and a half years and that the Supreme Court was expected within only days either to deny certiorari or to assume jurisdiction over the case for eventual disposition on the merits, the government urged that we act as expeditiously as possible to authorize the transfer [to a civilian court]. The government styled its motion as an “emergency application,” but it provided no explanation as to what comprised the asserted exigency.

… They have left the impression that the government may even have come to the belief that the principle in reliance upon which it has detained Padilla for this time, that the President possesses the authority to detain enemy combatants who enter into this country for the purpose of attacking America and its citizens from within, can, in the end, yield to expediency with little or no cost to its conduct of the war against terror — an impression we would have thought the government likewise could ill afford to leave extant.

So what Mr. Luttig says so precisely, as only a judge can… is that by asking the 4th Circuit to please hurry up and transfer Padilla to civilian court,, they basically negate the whole reason they had for holding Padilla, in military custody, without trial, for 3.5 years.

In other words… the War on Terror is just another sham. Like the “War on Drugs” before it… what was once a cause borne out of grim necessity has deteriorated into a cover for massive military and pork-barrel spending… as well as (and perhaps uniquely)dangerous political power.

Mr. Luttig’s revelations should set off alarms in the minds of many conservatives. In effect, he’s taken the boogeyman out the closet, held it up to the light, and announced it to be a fraud. After all this time the boogeyman the US Administration has been pushing us to believe in has just been it’s own reflection in a mirror.

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