Donuts And Politics

As a Constitutional Law teacher, this decision was a long time in coming.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered its third consecutive rebuff to the Bush administration’s handling of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, ruling 5 to 4 that the prisoners there have a constitutional right to go to federal court to challenge their continued detention.

The court declared unconstitutional a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that, at the administration’s behest, stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from the detainees seeking to challenge their designation as enemy combatants.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the truncated review procedure provided by a previous law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, “falls short of being a constitutionally adequate substitute” because it failed to offer “the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus.”

Justice Kennedy declared: “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”

To deny prisoners the right to challenge their detention and the reason for their detention is simply unconstitutional. This is what the Bush administration has been doing for the last seven years. Time and again the Court has smacked down the sham of a trial system Bush has tried to set up because its simply a joke and a complete abomination. Its basically a kangaroo court, not real justice. I say if the government has a reason, has evidence that people in Guantanamo Prison committed a crime let them present it to a REAL court and let the court decide. I have no idea whether or not the prisoners down there did anything, but maybe they did. Some have been let out after years because the government imprisoned the wrong person. I mean, next they will be imprisoning Americans and not allowing YOU to have a habeas corpus hearing. Think about that. See below for more on Habeas Corpus rights in the Constitution.

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