Imperial Judiciary Gets In The Fight

Two recent and refreshingly sensible court decisions handed down relating to the government's war-fighting powers in the GWOT:

One held that the government has broad powers to detain non-citizens indefinitely:

A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled yesterday that the government has wide latitude under immigration law to detain noncitizens on the basis of religion, race or national origin, and to hold them indefinitely without explanation.

The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit by Muslim immigrants detained after 9/11, and it dismissed several key claims the detainees had made against the government. But the judge, John Gleeson of United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, allowed the lawsuit to continue on other claims, mostly that the conditions of confinement were abusive and unconstitutional. Judge Gleeson's decision requires top federal officials, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft and Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, to answer to those accusations under oath.

This is the first time a federal judge has addressed the issue of discrimination in the treatment of hundreds of Muslim immigrants who were swept up in the weeks after the 2001 terror attacks and held for months before they were cleared of links to terrorism and deported. The roundups drew intense criticism, not only from immigrant rights advocates, but also from the inspector general of the Justice Department, who issued reports saying that the government had made little or no effort to distinguish between genuine suspects and Muslim immigrants with minor visa violations.

Lawyers in the suit, who vowed to appeal yesterday's decision, said parts of the ruling could potentially be used far more broadly, to detain any noncitizen in the United States for any reason.

"This decision is a green light to racial profiling and prolonged detention of noncitizens at the whim of the President," said Rachel Meeropol, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented the detainees. "The decision is profoundly disturbing because it legitimizes the fact that the Bush Administration rounded up and imprisoned our clients because of their religion and race."

Two obvious retorts to Ms. Meeropol's statement: "Damn right" and "Duh!" Let's see; the fanatics who slaughtered three thousand Americans just short of five years ago were (1) all of one ethnicity and (2) all of one religion. And their compatriots fit pretty much the same description. Wouldn't a failure to "racially profile" be...oh, what's the phrase I'm looking for - negligent? Obtuse? Stupid?

Counsel for the plaintiffs show their day-glo obvious trust of Islamists over their own president. Pity they aren't the exception rather than the rule for those of their ideological ilk.

It goes without saying that this ruling will be appealed. But that may not change much once the case reaches Olympus:

The Supreme Court [last] Thursday dealt a blow to longtime illegal residents, ruling that a deported Mexican man who lived in the United States for twenty years is barred from seeking legal residency or other relief in the courts.

By an 8-1 vote, justices said that Humberto Fernandez-Vargas, who was deported several times from the 1970s to 1981, is subject to a 1996 law Congress passed to streamline the legal process for expelling aliens who have been deported at least once before and returned.

That's not a perfect issue match, but there does appear to be quite a lot of overlap as it pertains to the reinvigoration of the intrinsic meaning of citizenship. Although Mark Levin is having his doubts.

Michael Ledeen, meanwhile, once again reiterates the stakes:

[T]here’s always a mosque, as my Italian friend Magdi Allam has been repeating for several years. Not all mosques are jihadi, but all jihadis come from a mosque. Look at the 9/11 terrorists, look at the killer of Daniel Pearl, and you will find well-off, educated men who became radicalized in a mosque. And I’ll bet you a good-sized farm that if we ever get to the bottom of 9/11 we’ll discover that mosques were central in maintaining contact with and discipline over the terrorists.

So mosques can be very dangerous places when the local imam preaches jihadism, as is done in the thousands of Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi mosques all over the world, including the United States. It is clearly a matter of some urgency to put an end to the sort of indoctrination and recruitment that took place at the Masjid Fatima Islamic Center in New York. But that is easier said than done, because the absolutist interpretation of the First Amendment protects the imams and the incendiary sermons preached at such mosques. Freedom of religion forbids the state from meddling in the religious activities of the mosques, and freedom of speech forbids the state from telling the imams “you can’t say that.”...

The all-out defenders of free speech and free religion will say that we are only entitled to go after the evil actions, because it is a greater evil to suppress the words and the thoughts that accompany them. Repressing these people and these words and thoughts today will make it possible for somebody to repress us and our thoughts and words tomorrow. I’ve got a lot of sympathy for that view, which I held throughout the Cold War with regard to Communism. And yet it seems suicidal to say “hands off all the mosques,” knowing that the radical mosques will manufacture slaughterers.

We're back to the same old dilemma: How best are our ideals defended? By upholding them at all costs, to the peril of the country that exists to defend them? Or by defending said country if it requires bending said ideals for their ultimate survival?

There's a scene from 2010 where the Russo-American crew is discussing what to tell HAL regarding their imminent departure from Jupiter space after the warning delivered by the being "who was David Bowman." HAL's creator, Dr. Chandra, is the lone dissenter against telling HAL whatever they have to to convince him to perform his part in their escape. Walter Curnow, the sarcastic American engineer played by Walter Lithgow, cracks, "If it's a question of him or us, I vote us. All opposed?...The ayes have it."

There's something eminently practical about survival. Maybe so-called "civil libertarians" will understand that someday - if they, and the country they hate, survive the consequences of their own suicidal actions.

[Double H/T: Captain's Quarters]