Another Legal Battle Lost For The Left
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down another defeat to the Left in America when they ruled that Jose Padilla can indeed be held as long as the government wants.
A federal appeals court Friday sided with the Bush administration and reversed a judge's order that the government either charge or free "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla.
The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the president has the authority to detain a U.S. citizen closely associated with al Qaida.
"The exceedingly important question before us is whether the President of the United States possesses the authority to detain militarily a citizen of this country who is closely associated with al Qaeda, an entity with which the United States is at war," Judge Michael Luttig wrote. "We conclude that the President does possess such authority."
A federal judge in South Carolina had ruled in March that the government cannot hold Padilla indefinitely as an "enemy combatant," a designation President Bush gave him in 2002. The government views Padilla as a militant who planned attacks on the United States.
The administration has said Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, sought to blow up hotels and apartment buildings in the United States and planned an attack with a "dirty bomb" radiological device.
Padilla was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in 2002 after returning from Pakistan. The federal government has said he was trained in weapons and explosives by members of al-Qaida.
Padilla, a New York-born convert to Islam, is one of only two U.S. citizens designated as enemy combatants. The second, Louisiana native Yaser Hamdi, was released last October after the Justice Department said he no longer posed a threat to the United States and no longer had any intelligence value.
Hamdi, who was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2001, gave up his American citizenship and returned to his family in Saudi Arabia as a condition of his release.
I would like to remind the Left of a little known law. At least they know little of it, but it is still on the books, and it thoroughly pertains to Padilla.
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. –USC Title 18, Section 2381
This law applies to US citizens that decide that they would rather take up arms against the legal, duly-elected government than simply abide by their Constitutional rights to redress grievances. Padilla, as stated above, stands accused of attempting to detonate a dirty bomb in Chicago, and follow it up with bombings against apartments. The very thought of such an attack sends chills down the spines of concerned Americans that understand the chaos the would have erupted, and the amount of dead could have been catastrophic.
And, of course, our "golden boy" to succeed Justice O’Connor on the court, was involved in this decision. Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote the following in the decision today:
The exceedingly important question before us is whether the President of the United States possesses the authority to detain militarily a citizen of this country who is closely associated with al Qaeda, an entity with which the United States is at war; who took up arms on behalf of that enemy and against our country in a foreign combat zone of that war; and who thereafter traveled to the United States for the avowed purpose of further prosecuting that war on American soil, against American citizens and targets.
We conclude that the President does possess such authority pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force Joint Resolution enacted by Congress in the wake of the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is reversed.
YES! Again, the higher courts get it right, while the lower courts continue to screw it up. Luttig continues with the synopsis of the case.
On June 11, 2002, Padilla filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Southern District of New York, claiming that his detention violated the Constitution. Id. at 164. The Supreme Court of the United States ultimately ordered Padilla’s petition dismissed without prejudice, holding that his petition was improperly filed in the Southern District of New York. Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 124 S. Ct. 2711, 2727 (2004). And on July 2, 2004, Padilla filed the present petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the District of South Carolina. J.A. 166.
The district court subsequently held that the President lacks the authority to detain Padilla, id. at 180-81, that Padilla’s detention is in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States, id., and that Padilla therefore must either be criminally charged or released, id. at 183. This appeal followed. We expedited consideration of this appeal at the request of the parties, hearing argument in the case on July 19, 2005.
Sorry, the lower courts got it wrong. Padilla, once taken into custody as an enemy combatant, immediately loses his rights to challenge his detention in a civilian court. His case must be dealt with through the tribunals that were approved of, and established by Congress. That is where his fate lies, and there is nothing that says he can’t be charged with treason in those tribunals. He was a US citizen who returned home to further al Qaeda’s war against America by attempting to institute a reign of terror here.
But Luttig brilliantly lays out the legal reasoning as to why Padilla, and similarly Hamdi, can be held as enemy combatants without charges. Other than the fact that such people caught during a time of war do not get charged until the war is fully prosecuted.
The Authorization for Use of Military Force Joint Resolution (AUMF), upon which the President explicitly relied in his order that Padilla be detained by the military and upon which the government chiefly relies in support of the President’s authority to detain Padilla, was enacted by Congress in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. It provides as follows:
[T]he President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. Pub. L. No. 107-40, § 2(a), 115 Stat. 224 (September 18, 2001).
The Supreme Court has already once interpreted this Joint Resolution in the context of a military detention by the President. In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 124 S. Ct. 2633 (2004), the Supreme Court held, on the facts alleged by the government, that the AUMF authorized the military detention of Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen who fought alongside Taliban forces in Afghanistan, was captured by United States allies on a battlefield there, and was detained in the United States by the military.2 Id. at 2635-37, 2641. The "narrow question," id. at 2639, addressed by the Court in Hamdi was "whether the Executive has the authority to detain citizens who qualify as ‘enemy combatants,’" id., defined for purposes of that case as "individual[s] who . . . [were] ‘"part of or supporting forces hostile to the United States or coalition partners"’ in Afghanistan and who ‘"engaged in an armed conflict against the United States"’ there," id. The controlling plurality of the Court answered that narrow question in the affirmative, concluding, based upon "longstanding law-of-war principles," id. at 2641, that Hamdi’s detention was "necessary and appropriate" within the meaning of the AUMF because "[t]he capture and detention of lawful combatants and the capture, detention, and trial of unlawful combatants, by ‘universal agreement and practice,’ are ‘important incident[s] of war,’" id. at 2640 (quoting Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 28 (1942)). The rationale for this law-of-war principle, Justice O’Connor explained for the plurality, is that "detention to prevent a combatant’s return to the battlefield is a fundamental incident of waging war." Id. at 2641.
Excellent analysis, and a perfect interpretation of not only the precedents involved in the Padilla/Hamdi cases, but the sheer intelligence presented by Judge Luttig in explaining why Padilla can be held virtually indefinitely is right on the money. This man was intent on hurting this nation.
The AUMF was interpreted to mean that the president has the authorization to designate enemy combatants, as decided by the Supreme Court, and it therefore transfers over to Padilla. There is no question that Padilla qualifies as an enemy combatant, as it evidenced by his intentions upon returning to America. And based on the definition set by the Supreme Court, there is no difference between Hamdi and Padilla. Luttig points out that not only was Padilla set to attack this nation from within, based on testimony given in his previous court appearances, but that he, like Hamdi, also took up arms against our troops on the side of the enemy in Afghanistan.
But the heart of the case goes back to a precedent that Luttig cites clearly and concisely in his decision. It is not the Hamdi precedent, but rather the Ex parte Quirin; a case dealt with 1942.
Our conclusion that the AUMF as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Hamdi authorizes the President’s detention of Padilla as an enemy combatant is reinforced by the Supreme Court’s decision in Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942), on which the plurality in Hamdi itself heavily relied. In Quirin, the Court held that Congress had authorized the military trial of Haupt, a United States citizen who entered the country with orders from the Nazis to blow up domestic war facilities but was captured before he could execute those orders. Id. at 20-21, 28, 46. The Court reasoned that Haupt’s citizenship was no bar to his military trial as an unlawful enemy belligerent, concluding that "[c]itizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts, are enemy belligerents within the meaning of . . . the law of war." Id. at 37-38.
Like Haupt, Padilla associated with the military arm of the enemy, and with its aid, guidance, and direction entered this country bent on committing hostile acts on American soil. J.A. 22-23. Padilla thus falls within Quirin’s definition of enemy belligerent, as well as within the definition of the equivalent term accepted by the plurality in Hamdi. Compare Quirin, 317 U.S. at 37-38 (holding that "[c]itizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts, are enemy belligerents within the meaning of . . . the law of war"), with Hamdi, 124 S. Ct. at 2639 (accepting for purposes of the case the government’s definition of "enemy combatants" as those who were "‘"part of or supporting forces hostile to the United States or coalition partners"’ in Afghanistan and who ‘"engaged in an armed conflict against the United States"’ there").
We understand the plurality’s reasoning in Hamdi to be that the AUMF authorizes the President to detain all those who qualify as "enemy combatants" within the meaning of the laws of war, such power being universally accepted under the laws of war as necessary in order to prevent the return of combatants to the battlefield during conflict.
Given that Padilla qualifies as an enemy combatant under both the definition adopted by the Court in Quirin and the definition accepted by the controlling opinion in Hamdi, his military detention as an enemy combatant by the President is unquestionably authorized by the AUMF as a fundamental incident to the President’s prosecution of the war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Padilla marshals essentially four arguments for the conclusion that his detention is unlawful. None of them ultimately is persuasive.
Nor is any effort that Padilla can put forth. He has been beaten soundly each time except the appeal prior to the Fourth Circuit Court’s decision today. The next step is a trip to the Supreme Court. I doubt the court will touch it as they handed down a ruling in Hamdi that stated that the US has the right to hold him indefinitely. Now, eventually, he was released back to Saudi Arabia with a warning that if he’s caught again on US soil, or in combat against our forces (a sad fact that has been plaguing our troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq) he’s toast.
Padilla doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on. It doesn’t matter if he’s a US citizen. The civil law he is trying to present to the courts isn’t working. They have no precedence. He was caught, and admitted what his plans were. Those plans that he admitted to is the smoking gun that entitles the US government to charge this citizen with treason. This is no different than incidents in the past where citizens were charged with treason. It occurred in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and all the way up through our history. It does not happen often, but it has happened, and it can happen again.
Padilla’s going to continue his whining appeals. Let him. The courts have spoken, and he is stuck where he is at. Even if the Supreme Court does take this case up, the outcome will be similar to that of Hamdi. He’s staying put until this war is over, or until the tribunals levy a charge against him, and begin his full hearing.
Publius II
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down another defeat to the Left in America when they ruled that Jose Padilla can indeed be held as long as the government wants.
A federal appeals court Friday sided with the Bush administration and reversed a judge's order that the government either charge or free "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla.
The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the president has the authority to detain a U.S. citizen closely associated with al Qaida.
"The exceedingly important question before us is whether the President of the United States possesses the authority to detain militarily a citizen of this country who is closely associated with al Qaeda, an entity with which the United States is at war," Judge Michael Luttig wrote. "We conclude that the President does possess such authority."
A federal judge in South Carolina had ruled in March that the government cannot hold Padilla indefinitely as an "enemy combatant," a designation President Bush gave him in 2002. The government views Padilla as a militant who planned attacks on the United States.
The administration has said Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, sought to blow up hotels and apartment buildings in the United States and planned an attack with a "dirty bomb" radiological device.
Padilla was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in 2002 after returning from Pakistan. The federal government has said he was trained in weapons and explosives by members of al-Qaida.
Padilla, a New York-born convert to Islam, is one of only two U.S. citizens designated as enemy combatants. The second, Louisiana native Yaser Hamdi, was released last October after the Justice Department said he no longer posed a threat to the United States and no longer had any intelligence value.
Hamdi, who was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2001, gave up his American citizenship and returned to his family in Saudi Arabia as a condition of his release.
I would like to remind the Left of a little known law. At least they know little of it, but it is still on the books, and it thoroughly pertains to Padilla.
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. –USC Title 18, Section 2381
This law applies to US citizens that decide that they would rather take up arms against the legal, duly-elected government than simply abide by their Constitutional rights to redress grievances. Padilla, as stated above, stands accused of attempting to detonate a dirty bomb in Chicago, and follow it up with bombings against apartments. The very thought of such an attack sends chills down the spines of concerned Americans that understand the chaos the would have erupted, and the amount of dead could have been catastrophic.
And, of course, our "golden boy" to succeed Justice O’Connor on the court, was involved in this decision. Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote the following in the decision today:
The exceedingly important question before us is whether the President of the United States possesses the authority to detain militarily a citizen of this country who is closely associated with al Qaeda, an entity with which the United States is at war; who took up arms on behalf of that enemy and against our country in a foreign combat zone of that war; and who thereafter traveled to the United States for the avowed purpose of further prosecuting that war on American soil, against American citizens and targets.
We conclude that the President does possess such authority pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force Joint Resolution enacted by Congress in the wake of the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is reversed.
YES! Again, the higher courts get it right, while the lower courts continue to screw it up. Luttig continues with the synopsis of the case.
On June 11, 2002, Padilla filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Southern District of New York, claiming that his detention violated the Constitution. Id. at 164. The Supreme Court of the United States ultimately ordered Padilla’s petition dismissed without prejudice, holding that his petition was improperly filed in the Southern District of New York. Rumsfeld v. Padilla, 124 S. Ct. 2711, 2727 (2004). And on July 2, 2004, Padilla filed the present petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the District of South Carolina. J.A. 166.
The district court subsequently held that the President lacks the authority to detain Padilla, id. at 180-81, that Padilla’s detention is in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States, id., and that Padilla therefore must either be criminally charged or released, id. at 183. This appeal followed. We expedited consideration of this appeal at the request of the parties, hearing argument in the case on July 19, 2005.
Sorry, the lower courts got it wrong. Padilla, once taken into custody as an enemy combatant, immediately loses his rights to challenge his detention in a civilian court. His case must be dealt with through the tribunals that were approved of, and established by Congress. That is where his fate lies, and there is nothing that says he can’t be charged with treason in those tribunals. He was a US citizen who returned home to further al Qaeda’s war against America by attempting to institute a reign of terror here.
But Luttig brilliantly lays out the legal reasoning as to why Padilla, and similarly Hamdi, can be held as enemy combatants without charges. Other than the fact that such people caught during a time of war do not get charged until the war is fully prosecuted.
The Authorization for Use of Military Force Joint Resolution (AUMF), upon which the President explicitly relied in his order that Padilla be detained by the military and upon which the government chiefly relies in support of the President’s authority to detain Padilla, was enacted by Congress in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. It provides as follows:
[T]he President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. Pub. L. No. 107-40, § 2(a), 115 Stat. 224 (September 18, 2001).
The Supreme Court has already once interpreted this Joint Resolution in the context of a military detention by the President. In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 124 S. Ct. 2633 (2004), the Supreme Court held, on the facts alleged by the government, that the AUMF authorized the military detention of Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen who fought alongside Taliban forces in Afghanistan, was captured by United States allies on a battlefield there, and was detained in the United States by the military.2 Id. at 2635-37, 2641. The "narrow question," id. at 2639, addressed by the Court in Hamdi was "whether the Executive has the authority to detain citizens who qualify as ‘enemy combatants,’" id., defined for purposes of that case as "individual[s] who . . . [were] ‘"part of or supporting forces hostile to the United States or coalition partners"’ in Afghanistan and who ‘"engaged in an armed conflict against the United States"’ there," id. The controlling plurality of the Court answered that narrow question in the affirmative, concluding, based upon "longstanding law-of-war principles," id. at 2641, that Hamdi’s detention was "necessary and appropriate" within the meaning of the AUMF because "[t]he capture and detention of lawful combatants and the capture, detention, and trial of unlawful combatants, by ‘universal agreement and practice,’ are ‘important incident[s] of war,’" id. at 2640 (quoting Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 28 (1942)). The rationale for this law-of-war principle, Justice O’Connor explained for the plurality, is that "detention to prevent a combatant’s return to the battlefield is a fundamental incident of waging war." Id. at 2641.
Excellent analysis, and a perfect interpretation of not only the precedents involved in the Padilla/Hamdi cases, but the sheer intelligence presented by Judge Luttig in explaining why Padilla can be held virtually indefinitely is right on the money. This man was intent on hurting this nation.
The AUMF was interpreted to mean that the president has the authorization to designate enemy combatants, as decided by the Supreme Court, and it therefore transfers over to Padilla. There is no question that Padilla qualifies as an enemy combatant, as it evidenced by his intentions upon returning to America. And based on the definition set by the Supreme Court, there is no difference between Hamdi and Padilla. Luttig points out that not only was Padilla set to attack this nation from within, based on testimony given in his previous court appearances, but that he, like Hamdi, also took up arms against our troops on the side of the enemy in Afghanistan.
But the heart of the case goes back to a precedent that Luttig cites clearly and concisely in his decision. It is not the Hamdi precedent, but rather the Ex parte Quirin; a case dealt with 1942.
Our conclusion that the AUMF as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Hamdi authorizes the President’s detention of Padilla as an enemy combatant is reinforced by the Supreme Court’s decision in Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942), on which the plurality in Hamdi itself heavily relied. In Quirin, the Court held that Congress had authorized the military trial of Haupt, a United States citizen who entered the country with orders from the Nazis to blow up domestic war facilities but was captured before he could execute those orders. Id. at 20-21, 28, 46. The Court reasoned that Haupt’s citizenship was no bar to his military trial as an unlawful enemy belligerent, concluding that "[c]itizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts, are enemy belligerents within the meaning of . . . the law of war." Id. at 37-38.
Like Haupt, Padilla associated with the military arm of the enemy, and with its aid, guidance, and direction entered this country bent on committing hostile acts on American soil. J.A. 22-23. Padilla thus falls within Quirin’s definition of enemy belligerent, as well as within the definition of the equivalent term accepted by the plurality in Hamdi. Compare Quirin, 317 U.S. at 37-38 (holding that "[c]itizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts, are enemy belligerents within the meaning of . . . the law of war"), with Hamdi, 124 S. Ct. at 2639 (accepting for purposes of the case the government’s definition of "enemy combatants" as those who were "‘"part of or supporting forces hostile to the United States or coalition partners"’ in Afghanistan and who ‘"engaged in an armed conflict against the United States"’ there").
We understand the plurality’s reasoning in Hamdi to be that the AUMF authorizes the President to detain all those who qualify as "enemy combatants" within the meaning of the laws of war, such power being universally accepted under the laws of war as necessary in order to prevent the return of combatants to the battlefield during conflict.
Given that Padilla qualifies as an enemy combatant under both the definition adopted by the Court in Quirin and the definition accepted by the controlling opinion in Hamdi, his military detention as an enemy combatant by the President is unquestionably authorized by the AUMF as a fundamental incident to the President’s prosecution of the war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Padilla marshals essentially four arguments for the conclusion that his detention is unlawful. None of them ultimately is persuasive.
Nor is any effort that Padilla can put forth. He has been beaten soundly each time except the appeal prior to the Fourth Circuit Court’s decision today. The next step is a trip to the Supreme Court. I doubt the court will touch it as they handed down a ruling in Hamdi that stated that the US has the right to hold him indefinitely. Now, eventually, he was released back to Saudi Arabia with a warning that if he’s caught again on US soil, or in combat against our forces (a sad fact that has been plaguing our troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq) he’s toast.
Padilla doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on. It doesn’t matter if he’s a US citizen. The civil law he is trying to present to the courts isn’t working. They have no precedence. He was caught, and admitted what his plans were. Those plans that he admitted to is the smoking gun that entitles the US government to charge this citizen with treason. This is no different than incidents in the past where citizens were charged with treason. It occurred in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and all the way up through our history. It does not happen often, but it has happened, and it can happen again.
Padilla’s going to continue his whining appeals. Let him. The courts have spoken, and he is stuck where he is at. Even if the Supreme Court does take this case up, the outcome will be similar to that of Hamdi. He’s staying put until this war is over, or until the tribunals levy a charge against him, and begin his full hearing.
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 12:21 PM
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