Is That Legal?

Prof. Muller:

Far from idoiotic, the main point of the Malkin blog post (which in your ongoing animus toward Ms. Malkin you apparently misunderstood) was to emphasize the observations of Andrew C. McCarthy relative to the need for a new SC justice who realizes that our country is at war and knows the difference between alien enemy combatants in military custody and ordinary criminal suspects.

Mr. McCarthy is not without credentials. He was senior trial counsel at the U.S.Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, as well as an adjunct associate professor of law at Fordham University and New York Law School. From 1993 through 1996, he led the prosecution against the jihad organization of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, in which a dozen Islamic militants were convicted of conducting a war of urban terrorism against the United States.

As Mr.McCarthy wrote: "...in Rasul, the Court held... that the alien enemy combatants detained overseas in wartime and held outside (or what was up until then regarded as outside) the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts were permitted to challenge their detentions in federal court...
Exactly what kind of procedures and protections are our enemies entitled to in these unprecedented court proceedings? Do they get counsel? Do they get discovery — including battlefield intelligence? Are these to be full-blown trials in which we take soldiers off the battlefield so that they can testify about the circumstances of the particular enemy combatant's apprehension during this firefight or that? How much, in the middle of a war, should federal judges be able to second-guess commanders in the field?"

The insanity of such decisions does, indeed, cry out for more common sense. The suggestion that whomever is selected to replace O'Connor should know the difference between war and peace deserves more than trivialization and ridicule.

Au contraire, Commander.

Malkin's incessant fear-mongering deserves far more ridicule and condemnation than I would be able to muster at this little blog, even if I devoted every single post to her writings.

It's OK, she's only talking about "illegal" enemy combatants. So our captives get all of the rights we've guaranteed through the treaties our past Presidents have signed and our past Senates have ratified. That is, unless one man arbitrarily decides, without hearing or possibility of review, that they're "illegal". Then they get the waterboard and we beat them until they die. What could be more just than that?

I'm a "wartime left-wing agitator!" ;-)

"Mr. McCarthy is not without credentials."

True, he was an alcoholic liar, but he had degrees!

Different McCarthy, Kristjan