Padilla case reversed: Bush can detain U.S. citizens without charging them - Page 3 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

rat · 10-05-2005, 03:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Very articulate argument. How do you cope with the comparatively repressive Texas governance and political climate?

There are certain things that are repressive, but overall, the Texas statutes are written in such a way that they quite clearly and inclusively define the rights we have. I think our State constitution is something like 400,000+ lines of the written word, so it's rather thorough. The executive branch in our state has severely limited power, and the judicial branch requires that district judges be elected by the people, helping prevent the sort of unpopular court stacking we may be facing with the US Supreme Court. Additionally, our tax codes are some of the most liberal, easily avoided statutes in the nation to the point that any large corporation that does a significant amount of business only pays taxes if it chooses to or has horrible tax counsel. Additionally, the tort limitations in our state, homestead laws and personal property exemptions from government seizures are some of the best in the nation. While many of our statutes may strike those of a more liberal bent as repressive, it's mostly on the societal standards/morals front as opposed to the vast majority of our code, which was established and implemented by men and women with a fundamental distrust of strong executive branches, which is partly what this nation is suffering from currently.

alansmithee · 10-07-2005, 06:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rat

This along with your little statement regarding safety makes me absolutely sick to the stomach to think about.

"Those who would sacrifice essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

That quote just seems to jump to mind. Safety as a whole, is a completely arbitrary and frankly idiotic concept. It is neither tangible nor measurable, let alone real. It is an illusory concept that allows the human mind to work within a specific set of parameters so that it can adequately address the world around itself. A sense of safety is no more than the comfort one receives from his environment and the factors within it. As the people of New Orleans found out, at any time, given any set of circumstances, your whole world can come crashing down around you.

It's funny, that paragraph would be just as truthful if I replaced "safety" with "freedom". The safety that the gov't can provide is the safety from the actions of other people, which scare me far more than a hurricane. I'm sure that during the anarchy following the hurricane and flooding, those people would have gladly given up some of the "freedom" of the looters and criminals for a little more safety to allow rescue efforts to happen.

Quote:

As to your second comment, regarding the government and the blind trust you place in it, I'm rather disheartened, as this seems to be a growing trend for the younger generation. You want to go down the slippery slope argument of safety, I'll take you down one that takes your argument a bit further.

1) Rights reduction occurs by the government in the guise of "safety."
2) Citizens eventually forfeit every right that could potentially cause harm or infringe the "safety" of others.
3) The government makes all decisions for people, without checks and balances to their power.
4) Rights of citizens completely disappear.
5) Without the obligations to the citizens (as the citizens have forfeitted their rights, and thus there are no government obligations to the citizenry), the government has carte blanche as not even the citizens have the right to stop it.
6) With obligations voided, the government acts in its own self-interest, as any reasonably aware entity will fundamentally do, regardless of the effects on its people.
7) The government's self-interest lies in fundamental conflict with that of the citizenry, by definition.
8) The government fulfills only the needs necessary for itself, and the citizenry falls into disrepair, poverty and despair.

The only difference between my slippery slope and yours is that mine is proven both by history and logic whereas yours lies firmly on a foundation of sand, piss and vinegar, holding no merit even to the most cursory of logical examinations.

For one, I never said I have blind trust in the government, I did say I trust the government more than the average person. That is only logical: the government is an actor whose actions can be somewhat predicted. The government is also more likely to follow standard rules because it relies upon those rules for its existance. People in general are random, illogical, and often operate off personal whims that might not be known until they have screwed you over in some way. And also, if we are speaking here of logic, you make a great deal of faulty assumptions that have no basis in reality. Your whole slippery slope argument, while cute, has little factual basis. There has been numerous points in history where autocratic government systems have led toward an increase in the well-being of the people under their rule. Before saying that an argument I never made holds no merit, perhaps you should examine your own somewhat. It has holes big enough to drive convoys of semitrucks through. There might be a way to challenge what I said on a logical basis, but you have failed to do so.

pig · 10-07-2005, 06:55 AM

alansmithee,

Quick question: If you accept the concept that slavery inherently limits the rights of the individual, then would you accept the conclusion that slavery tends towards more safety for all? Second, if you accept that slavery has often been the result of governmental policy decisions, then would you say that you trusted a government that enslaved people, say for instance people like you, to make decisions on your behalf more so than some "random person?"

Yakk · 10-07-2005, 07:20 AM

Btw, you do know "Alan Smithee" is a Hollywood term? Union rules mean that every movie has to have Director credit. When there is no director willing to take the blame for a movie, the name "Alan Smithee" is used for director credit.

The name "Alan Smithee" means "anonymous and doing something shameful".

I do not know if alansmithee means his choice of psuedonym to say this.

pig · 10-07-2005, 07:35 AM

yeah, i've seriously considered the "troll" factor here, but i'm giving the benefit of the doubt. it's why i haven't posted more to some of threads....well, shit the politics threads usually degenerate after 10-15 posts anyways, but...still.

Elphaba · 12-22-2005, 04:29 PM

The Court of Appeals has decided that the Bush Administration can't have it both ways, and it looks likely that the Padilla case will be heading to SCOTUS afterall.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/122205C.shtml

Quote:

US Bid to Transfer Padilla Is Denied
The Associated Press

Thursday 22 December 2005

A court refuses a request to move the terrorism suspect to civilian custody and rebukes the Bush administration for its handling of the case.

Washington - In a sharp rebuke, a federal appeals court denied Wednesday a Bush administration request to transfer terrorism suspect Jose Padilla from military to civilian law enforcement custody.

The three-judge panel of the US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., also refused the administration's request to vacate a September ruling that gave President Bush wide authority to detain "enemy combatants" indefinitely without charges on US soil.

The decision, written by conservative Judge J. Michael Luttig, questioned why the administration used one set of facts before the court for 3 1/2 years to justify holding Padilla without charges but used another set to persuade a grand jury in Florida to indict him last month.

Luttig said the administration had risked its "credibility before the courts" by appearing to try to keep the Supreme Court from reviewing the extent of the president's power to hold enemy combatants without charges.

Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, was arrested in 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport as he returned to the United States from Pakistan. Initially, then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft alleged Padilla planned to set off a radiological device known as a "dirty bomb."

But the administration argued before federal courts in New York and Virginia that Padilla should be held without charges because he had come back to the US to carry out an Al Qaeda-backed plot to blow up apartment buildings.

Last month, a grand jury in Miami charged Padilla as being part of a North American terrorist support cell that allegedly raised funds and recruited fighters to wage jihad outside the United States.

Administration lawyers immediately asked the appeals court to transfer Padilla from a US military brig in South Carolina to the custody of law enforcement authorities in Miami.

Luttig said the Supreme Court must sort out Padilla's fate, either by accepting or rejecting an appeal by his lawyers of the appellate court's September decision that the president has the authority to order his detention indefinitely.

Tasia Scolinos, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the agency was disappointed by the appellate court's decision. She said the government should be able to charge suspected terrorists with crimes, as well as hold them indefinitely as enemy combatants.

"The department is in the process of reviewing the court's order and will continue to consider all options with respect to pursuing the criminal charges as expeditiously as possible," Scolinos said.

One of Padilla's attorneys, Donna Newman, said she had "little to add" to what Luttig had written. "He says things better than I," she said. "I just hope that it's an incentive for the Supreme Court to grant our petition ... and hear this matter, which is of extreme public importance."

Luttig chastised the administration for failing to explain why it was using a different set of allegations against Padilla and forcing the appeals court to rely on media reports about the government's motivations.

The appellate judge pointed out that anonymous government officials were quoted in news reports saying Padilla was charged in Miami because the administration didn't want the Supreme Court to review the appeals court's September decision.

In a filing with the appeals court, the administration said it was willing to walk away from that ruling - considered a major victory for its legal war on terrorism - to justify its argument before the Supreme Court that Padilla's appeal was now irrelevant.

Luttig said the administration's actions left the impression that Padilla had been held "by mistake," and that its tactics could prove costly.

"These impressions have been left, we fear, at what may ultimately prove to be a substantial cost to the government's credibility before the courts, to whom it will one day need to argue again in support of a principle of assertedly like importance and necessity to the one that it seems to abandon today," he wrote.

"While there could be an objective that could command such a price as all of this, it is difficult to imagine what that objective would be."

The machinations to avoid the Padilla case going to SCOTUS, clearly have backfired in the worst possible way. The new chief justice may need to recuse himself on this one.

Elphaba · 12-29-2005, 04:30 PM

Padilla makes it to the Supreme Court, followed by a Bush counter attack. All eyes are on Chief Justice Roberts.

Link

Quote:

US Asks Supreme Court to Transfer Terror Suspect
By Eric Lichtblau
The New York Times

Wednesday 28 December 2005

Washington - The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court today to allow for the immediate transfer of Jose Padilla from a military brig to civilian custody to stand trial on terrorism charges, challenging an appellate court ruling last week that blocked the move.

The Justice Department, in an unusually strong criticism of a lower court that has historically been a staunch ally, said the earlier order blocking Mr. Padilla's transfer to civilian custody represented an "unwarranted attack" on presidential discretion.

In last week's ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., refused to allow Mr. Padilla to be transferred to civilian custody to face charges in Miami that he had conspired with Al Qaeda to commit terror attacks abroad.

The appeals court said that the Bush administration, in charging Mr. Padilla in criminal court in November after jailing him for more than three and a half years as an enemy combatant without charges, gave the appearance that it was trying to manipulate the court system to prevent the Supreme Court from hearing the case. And it warned that the maneuvering could harm the administration's credibility in the courts.

But Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, in the administration's new filing today asking the Supreme Court to take up the custody issue, said the Fourth Circuit's decision "defies both law and logic," and he noted that Mr. Padilla himself had sought to be transferred to civilian custody.

In unusually caustic language, the solicitor general said that the Fourth Circuit did not have the authority to "disregard a presidential directive." And he said its decision blocking Mr. Padilla's transfer "is based on a mischaracterization of events and an unwarranted attack on the exercise of Executive discretion, and, if given effect, would raise profound separation-of-powers concerns."

The Fourth Circuit is widely known as one of the most conservative appellate courts in the country, and it has sided with the Bush administration on a number of key issues involving matters of terrorism and national security.

Indeed, in a September ruling in the Padilla case, the Fourth Circuit affirmed President Bush's power to hold Mr. Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, as an enemy combatant tied to Al Qaeda. That opinion was written by Judge Michael J. Luttig, whom President Bush considered for recent Supreme Court vacancies, and it was Judge Luttig who also wrote last week's opinion blocking Mr. Padilla's transfer.

"Nothing in this case surprises me anymore," Donna Newman, one of Mr. Padilla's lawyer, said after the Justice Department's filing in the case today. "This is an unusual turn of events for the Justice Department to come out against the Fourth Circuit like this, because anybody who looks at precedent would see the Fourth Circuit is a very pro-government circuit that generally finds in favor of the government."

The Justice Department's application to the Supreme Court came a day after lawyers for Mr. Padilla, in a filing of their own to the justices, argued that President Bush had overstepped his authority in jailing their client as an enemy combatant without charges.

In their filing, his lawyers also pointed to President Bush's authorization of eavesdropping by the National Security Agency without warrants as another sign of an "unchecked executive branch," raising constitutional questions that they said the Supreme Court needed to resolve.

Mr. Padilla's lawyers argued that the Supreme Court should address the grave issues raised in the case to "ensure the checks and balances that the Framers erected to preserve America as a land of liberty under the rule of law."

Ms. Newman said she expected that the Supreme Court might decide at its Jan. 13 conference whether to hear Mr. Padilla's case, which the Bush administration argues is now mute because of the pending criminal charges against him.

Mr. Padilla, a convert to Islam, traveled through the Middle East and was arrested in May 2002 upon his return to the United States. The Bush administration, in declaring him an enemy combatant and jailing him in a military brig without access to a lawyer, initially accused him of plotting with Al Qaeda to detonate a radiological "dirty bomb" on American streets and plotting other attacks within the United States.

But in bringing criminal charges for the first time against Mr. Padilla last month, the administration reversed course and accused him of working to support violent jihad causes in Afghanistan and elsewhere overseas from 1993 through 2001. The criminal charges make no mention of the dirty bomb plot or other American attacks.

I'm eager to see what the judicial branch will say regarding executive discretion. I don't think it hyperbole to suggest that the Republic rests on this decision.

pan6467 · 12-29-2005, 05:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elphaba

Padilla makes it to the Supreme Court, followed by a Bush counter attack. All eyes are on Chief Justice Roberts.

Link

I'm eager to see what the judicial branch will say regarding executive discretion. I don't think it hyperbole to suggest that the Republic rests on this decision.

I agree the very foundatiuon of the seperation of powers lies in the coming judgement.

The question is though, what will Bush do if the ruling goes against him?

Elphaba · 12-29-2005, 07:21 PM

Pan, at this point I think the better question is what will we do?

10-07-2005, 06:55 AM	#83 (permalink)
pig pigglet pigglet Location: Locash	alansmithee, Quick question: If you accept the concept that slavery inherently limits the rights of the individual, then would you accept the conclusion that slavery tends towards more safety for all? Second, if you accept that slavery has often been the result of governmental policy decisions, then would you say that you trusted a government that enslaved people, say for instance people like you, to make decisions on your behalf more so than some "random person?" __________________ You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

10-07-2005, 07:20 AM	#84 (permalink)
Yakk Wehret Den Anfängen! Location: Ontario, Canada	Btw, you do know "Alan Smithee" is a Hollywood term? Union rules mean that every movie has to have Director credit. When there is no director willing to take the blame for a movie, the name "Alan Smithee" is used for director credit. The name "Alan Smithee" means "anonymous and doing something shameful". I do not know if alansmithee means his choice of psuedonym to say this. __________________ Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

10-07-2005, 07:35 AM	#85 (permalink)
pig pigglet pigglet Location: Locash	yeah, i've seriously considered the "troll" factor here, but i'm giving the benefit of the doubt. it's why i haven't posted more to some of threads....well, shit the politics threads usually degenerate after 10-15 posts anyways, but...still. __________________ You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

12-29-2005, 07:21 PM	#89 (permalink)
Elphaba Deja Moo Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA	Pan, at this point I think the better question is what will we do?