LAT:(Gitmo)Detainees May Be Moved to US(SC ruling response)

[DeepModem Mom]

Detainees May Be Moved Off Cuba Base

By John Hendren, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON — Senior Bush administration officials are considering moving hundreds of detainees from a facility in Cuba to prisons within the United States in response to Supreme Court rulings this week that granted military prisoners access to U.S. courts, officials said Tuesday.

As attorneys for detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, began preparing the first of hundreds of expected lawsuits demanding that the government justify the detentions, administration officials acknowledged that they were unprepared for a rebuke in two landmark Supreme Court decisions that rejected the military's treatment of prisoners in the war on terrorism....

***

To avoid ferrying prisoners and government lawyers to federal courts across the country, as might be required, Pentagon and Justice Department officials said they had discussed moving all detainees to a military prison in a conservative judicial district within the United States to enable the consolidation of all the proceedings in one court. They said possible locations could be Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., where there is an Army base with a military prison, or Charleston, S.C., home of the Charleston Naval Weapons Station, which houses the Navy brig.

Another option would be to allow prisoners to file for writs of habeas corpus — a demand for legal justification for their imprisonment — at a makeshift court at the base in Cuba. The Supreme Court left open the possibility of such an option.

Under a third proposal offered Justice Department officials and discussed at a high-level interagency meeting Tuesday, a senior administration official said, the administration would ask Congress to designate one federal court district to try the cases — most likely Washington, D.C., or the Eastern District of Virginia, whose jurisdiction includes the Pentagon....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-detain30jun30,1,7584070.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

1. Maybe the Camp X-Ray facilities

can be sold to Club Med?

Glad to see the Writ of Habeas Corpus ("the Great Writ) is still important.

[IndianaGreen]

2. Perhaps Congress will stop shirking its responsibilities and...

write the rules for handling such prisoners. Congress bears the blame for this mess, not Bush! Bush was given a free reign by Congress after 9/11 when it passed the Fascist PATRIOT Act and by failing to exercise its constitutional duty to hold the Executive Branch accountable.

I don't care if the President is Republican or Democrat, if we allow him to do as he pleases and give him a law that makes him dictator, don't be surprised when he acts like one.

It is time to define and impose limits on the "Commander-in-Chief" clause in the Constitution (it will require a Constitutional Amendment). No President should get us into a war without a Constitutional Declaration of War.

President Truman's blunder in Korea was that he bypassed the Constitution when he sent troops without Congress voting for war. All the Presidents since Truman have expanded their war making powers in disregard to the limits the Framers of the Constitution placed on the Presidency. Bush is merely the latest, and most flagrant, example of the Imperial Presidency.

[struggle4progress]

3. Here's one old favorite:

TEXT OF THE PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

SEC. 1. Except in the event of an attack or invasion the authority of Congress to declare war shall not become effective until confirmed by a majority of all votes cast thereon in a Nation-wide referendum.

SEC. 2. Whenever war is declared the President shall immediately conscript and take for use by the Government all the public and private war properties, yards, factories, and supplies, together with employees necessary for their operation, fixing the compensation for private properties temporarily employed for the war period at a rate not in excess of 4 percent based on tax values assessed in the year preceding the war.

Source: Congressional Record, 92d Congress, 1st session, pp. 9052-53, 9065 (April 1, 1971)

http://www.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/WarAmendment.html


Note that it not only requires real popular consent, but it eliminates war-profiteering as well!

[KoKo]

4. Well said Indiana. Congress has a chance to redeem themselves on

this one. Unfortunately, look who controls it... I have no doubt Bushies will pull a fast one on this. I worried that the Supremes gave him the opportunity. While it looked like a defeat for Bush it may turn out to be an advantage. Need some powerful liberal lawyers to get on this to start some discussion or Bushies will sneak through a way to deny these folks acess to their lawyers by just moving them to a hideaway in US...

[The Magistrate]

10. Well Said, My Hoosier Friend!

This one is beyond partisan politics: it is for the all the ages we hope as patriots this Republic will endure!

[indepat]

11. Won't those freakin' lock-stepping members of Congress give the Emperor

whatever he wants, damn the Constitution, damn our liberty and freedom?

[DeepModem Mom]

5. Kicking because I'm curious if others have thoughts...

about how this might play out --

[louis-t]

6. From story at Yahoo:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=3&u=/nm/20040630/ts_nm/security_court_prisoners_dc


Administration officials told the Times they were unprepared for the ruling.


"They really didn't have a specific plan for what to do, case by case, if we lost," a senior Defense Department official was quoted as saying in the report. "The Justice Department didn't have a plan. State didn't have a plan.


"It's astounding to me that these cases have been pending for so long and nobody came up with a contingency plan."

Message to senior Defense Dept. official: Tell me again why this surprises you?

[gratuitous]

7. Ohmigod, what are they doing?!

All those dangerous terrorists, brought right where they've always wanted to be, the mainland of the United States! Why are these dangerous terrorists being brought to the country they've all sworn to the death to destoy? What has that activist, liberal Supreme Court done to our nation? Please oh please, George the Wise and Benevolent, stop them! Stop them today, we beseech you!!

[saigon68]

9. THE CHIMPANZEE WANT THEM DEAD ANY WAY

This blood lust allows him to achieve arousal.

[Kimber Scott]

8. Assuming these guys might be guilty why do they have to take them to

"conservative" courts? What are they saying? We have to take them to a place we know the judges are biased? Judges are biased? Hmmmm... That's not what they say about these guys Bush tries to get appointed to the courts. They says they're not biased and the Democrats are just playing politics. Or, is it only "liberal" judges are "activists," and conservative judges are right? That's the ticket.

[DeepModem Mom]

12. Very good point, KS -- n/t