Gopher vs. Supreme Court

I’m sure you all remember Fred Grandy who played the character “Gopher” on the TV series “Love Boat”. You probably know he went on to become a Republican Congressman, and now he has a conservative radio program here in DC on WMAL 630 with a co-host Andy Parks, a local radio icon.

The other day, Fred took on the Supreme Court’s decision to grant Fifth Amendment rights to terrorists in a remarkable essay on the subject;

…it was 1950 and the Supreme Court ruled in Johnson v. Eisentrager that non-Americans (in this case German nationals) held in a prison in then American-occupied Germany did not have a Fifth Amendment right of habeas corpus. In fact in a 6-3 decision the high court held  that to rule otherwise would effectively give enemy aliens engaged in “unlawful hostile action against us” immunity from military trials, putting them in a more protected position than our own American soldiers.  Here’s how they expressed it.

But even by the most magnanimous view, our law does not abolish inherent distinctions recognized throughout the civilized world between citizens and aliens, nor between aliens of friendly and of enemy allegiance, nor between resident enemy aliens who have submitted themselves to our laws and non-resident enemy aliens who at all times have remained with, and adhered to, enemy governments.

So here is my question to the five eminent justices who saw fit last week to effectively overturn Johnson v. Eisentrager  and extend Fifth Amendment protections to enemy combatants which will, of course, grant them access to civilian courts, allow them to lawyer up, seek favorable venues, file motions to delay, and otherwise manipulate the American legal process to their own advantage:

The piece is worth a thorough read. Communists, hippies and terrorists have all used our system against us to some degree, depending on the magnanimity of our civil rights commitment and the fairness of our court system – which is why we’ve become like the world’s school nerd. Everyone knows they can pick on us and get away with it. hell, this morning, I read that Ahmadinejad  bragged that he foiled a US plot to kidnap him while he was in Iraq and that the Islamic Republic has faced down the US in a nuclear standoff and won. As if….

Now we’ve decided we’re going to give these filthy animals Fifth Amendment rights so they can get another shot at killing more Americans? Hell, give them a shot at killing their own people trying to bring civilization to their own countries. I think we’ve reached the limits of our generosity. But, if a Democrat gets to appoint Supreme Court judges for the next four years, I’m sure we’ll get to see a lot more wrong-head and ill-fated decisions in our future.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Legal, Politics, Terror War