In the tradition of forum/viewtopic.php?t=22031&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

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Kent, i have to tell you your makin a mountain out of a molehill--I dunno whether you find padilla himself to be a sypathtic character or what, if you do your pretty much hosed because The courts seem to think that deeming him an enemy combatant is part of the presidents power as commander in cheif, and if you want to argue over that, well then fine, i mean there is certainly an argument there-- But that doesnt seem to be what this thread is about.

This thread, whether it was intended as such or not, really amounts to nothing more than an unfounded and alarmist tirade against the current administration, using the obviously incorrect statements of one fuck-ing idiot to substantiate it.

If youll notice the courts ruling was not based on that fucking idiot padillas reading of the constitution. In fact if that logic ever came before the supreme court i promise you that justice stevens, that old fuck, would be so taken aback hed literally die of a heart attack on the spot- else he'd at least laugh so hard hed fall out of his chair and break his hip, which would be tite because justice stevens is a POS.

That bullshit that padilla says amounts to absolutely nothing, its of no precedential value, it wouldnt even standup in an Alabama court in a case about a black man raping a white woman. That padilla statement is literally THAT worthless and inconsequential in terms of its legal power.

Padilla is yet another example of how a unprincipled and ignorant idiot can get to the top nonetheless- happens all the time- Im shure you think that applies to bush- i personally think that applies to clinton- but you get my point...that alleged 'argument' is absloutely the most specious thing in existence- and though im not defending his idiocy or his smoke blowing, or whatever it was, i am a little surprised someone as purportedly intelligent and well informed as yourself could take this thing seriously and come to the absurd conclusion that because of that statement alone, somehow all our fundamantal rights have been compromised -- i am literally in stunned disbeleif that you beleive this is so 'dangerous'--Truthfully, i almost question your intentions in this thread, and part of me thinks you are just using this to bash the administration- not that i think youd do that by any means, but when you eliminate the impossible (you takin this seriously), only the improbable remains (ulterior motive for post), right?

Dont get me wrong, the fact that the top ranking legal official would say something so stupid DOES reflect badly on the administration, but if we went and posted every idiotic statement made by presidential appointees in any administration, we'd have to make a seperate forum, just for that, i think...

ANyways enough of this:
Cliffnotes: Your all worried and alarmed that this sort of constitutional readin is dangerous
The answer: It isn't, its absolute puffery and cant be taken seriously, and the only thing it could possibly accomplish is to give justice stevens a heart attack, or at the very least make him crap himself inside his robes (which would be tite)

now can this thread die plz? I dont usually bother with political threads because they mostly boil down to matters of opinion-- But this one is so blatantly misleading, i had to say somethin...I mean if your gonna go onna tirade about somehtin like this, just be like 'FUCK PADILLA THAT NO TALENT FUCK UCK NEVER SHOULDA LEFT THE STRAWBERRY FIELDS...AND MAN BUSH SUCKS...' - then idda been like, okay, standard stuff- Goood onya-- but spreading misinformation in the form of a tirade masquerading as fact is bad for the children, old bean! THINK OF THE CHILDREN...

man im cranky when im sober--ugh

"puppy-like desire." That's a new one for me. I think I like it.

Mecos, you're right: in terms of political theory and judicial review, what Gonzalez says about anything doesn't have any more importance than a heap of dog sh*t. But in terms of the real world, Gonzalez's views reflect what the administration is thinking and doing.

Basically, Gonzalez's testimony is one big ritualized squatting over the Constitution and letting fly with a major dump. He's saying: we (= the administration) can do this kind of violence to the clear meaning of the Constitution, and we don't even care how stupid it sounds. We are so contemptuous of Congress that we won't even bother presenting a decent argument. He's demonstrating that neither the Congress nor the Constitution has any power to constrain the administration from doing what it wants to do.

When the government is working properly, I don't much care what one donk says about anything. There are checks and balances in place. But right now I'm not sure the checks and balances are actually there. The executive branch has this theory, that they're making explicit, that says that they can do whatever they want, and nobody can stop them.

F'r instance: Cheney has said that the administration thinks they have the right to attack Iran, or anybody else, regardless of whether there is a vote. Even if the Congress comes down and explicitly passes a law saying no going to war in Iran, they can ignore it and attack anyway. IIRC, Cheney thought that the first George Bush made a mistake by going to Congress to ask for authorization to kick Saddam out of Kuwait, because Cheney thinks the executive branch has the unilateral right to make all decisions with respect to issues of war and peace. I think that's a radical theory. It gets really radical, and scary, when it's taken to apply to all aspects of government, not just war and peace. The Padilla case was originally justified by talking about dirty bombs, which at least relates to war. But this newest justification seems to be more forthright: all your rights are belong to us, the executive branch, and we won't even bother pretending to justify it by talking about war or terrorism anymore. In fact, like I said earlier, we won't even bother pretending to make a reasonable justification. It's a pure power play.

The Padilla case is actually more important than Gonzalez's justification of it. No matter how you spin it, Jose Padilla was an American citizen who was picked up and then incarcerated for years (and tortured?) with no right to see a lawyer and no chance to contest the charges against him. He was treated as guilty without a trial. I would think that being an American citizen would mean that, at minimum, you have the right not to have that happen to you. Period. But as the Padilla case shows, we don't have that right.

(Maybe we have that right in theory. Maybe a 5-4 majority of Supreme Court justices might eventually conclude that what happened to Padilla was unconstitutional and wrong. But it still happened. Not a lot of comfort to know that "in theory" you have a right, when in practice it can be ignored at any time.)

If Padilla didn't have that as a fundamental right (in the real world, not just the world of theory), then neither do you, and neither do I.

Let me put it this way. Say your father is arrested tomorrow by agents of the US government and swept off to a secret prison, where he is held indefinitely. (If your father is dead, my condolences; please substitute another family member.) No lawyer is allowed to see him. Nobody knows where he is. He is not charged with any crime. Who, exactly, has the power to get him freed? Who has the power to challenge his detention?

I can't think of anybody. Can you? (That's a serious question, by the way. Please answer it as best you can.)

If the answer to these questions is "Nobody," then what exactly is meant by saying that your father (or anyone else) has any rights? (Right to vote isn't really applicable when you're in prison. Same goes for right to peaceably assemble or speak freely or bear arms or ....)

Conclusion: Until somebody makes clear to the administration that there are three co-equal branches of government and that the Constitution is not toilet paper, you have the rights that the administration wants you to have. Full stop. In theory, you have a ton of rights that nobody can take away. In practice, not so much.

Maybe all this makes me a raving lefty of some sort. I'm not sure how. If it were Bill (or Hillary) Clinton who thought being Prez meant they could ignore the Constitution, the Supremes, and the Congress, I'd be just as pissed-off and worried. If Hillary started imprisoning Republicans on the charge of being part of "a vast right-wing conspiracy," and then holding them in jail without trial, I'd be on the side of the Republicans in saying she's a nutcase and needs to be stopped.

Maybe I'm not a lefty per se, just an alarmist -- a little too prepared to see the worst. That's definitely possible. Although I came down firmly against all of the "9/11 was a plot" theories, when those were floating around here. I don't think it's particularly likely that the Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy, either, for what that's worth....

Tangent:
It's not that political views cannot be proven or disproven. The reason why political discussion often goes nowhere is because 1) people don't know how to argue and 2) people are highly irrational when it comes to political and ethical issues. People generally aren't interested in discovering the truth when it comes to this sort of thing, but rather just want to advocate for their side. This leads to a lot of faux arguments. People pretend to argue, but they aren't really, since if things go badly, they will just bail and continue to hold their views. You can also throw into the mix the fact that in order to have a "big" debate about which side is correct, it takes a lot of time and effort to get all the details out on the table and a lot of skill from at least one party in understanding the logic of a position and how to analyze and assess that position. Add to that the passion with which people hold a political view and judgment gets clouded and it becomes difficult to maintain the cool calm rationality that is needed even should one possess that ability. That's all quite a lot to hope for in an internet forum discussion, akin to needing runner runner. So I generally don't bother unless its a forum specifically dedicated to that sort of thing and the I know the interlocutor is committed to logic as a reliable tool for determing the truth, which is pretty rare even on that sort of forum.

Non-tangent:
Here, however, we don't have a thread that is about liberal v. conservative. We have a thread about habeas corpus. It isn't a nothing thread, as the Padilla case demonstrates. It is about the power of the executive branch. It appears to me that the posts thus far demonstrate more of a common concern with this infringement rather than one side saying it's okay and the other saying it's not. That we can agree on this, doesn't mean we need agree on liberal, conservative, moderate, etc. It just means that we all think the government shouldn't be able to arrest people and hold them without charge for three and a half years. Perhaps I have read the posts of people too generously. Maybe we do still have a disagreement. If so, that disagreement isn't about whether Bush is a good president or bad or whether one political world view is correct or not, but rather it is a question of whether we think one's status as a terrorist should be determined by the president (or some member of the executive branch) or whether that should be decided by a jury of one's peers. To put that in another form, if you are to be put in jail for a long time, should that be done through the executive branch or the judicial branch?

Kent, the problem I have with what you are saying is that you are blaming this administration, and you are acting as if there is no legal grounds for what they did.

Congress authorized the use of force for the president in going after Al Queada. Padilla was deemed to be an Al Queada member and thus an unlawful enemy combatant.

Seperation of powers says that the branches do not have oversight authority over each other. There is some precedent to what was done with Padilla, that is why one court upheld the ruling.

He has no been charged with other crimes that can be prosecuted without endagering national security.

What Gonzales said is ridiculous, but he was put in a tough spot and was being hounded by a bunch of blathering self serving idiots. This war is much different from wars in the past. There will be a lot of interesting decisions coming out from this.

And yeah, the adminstration can launch an attack without congressional approval. Clinton did it, HW Bush did it, Reagan did it. Kennedy did it.

We had an undeclared war with France. If you read some of those links that I posted you will see the historical and legal precedence for the administrations stance.

this stuff is going through the courts and the courts will hash it out.