Under this new law, the military can arrest people wherever they are on the globe and hold them indefinitely without allowing them access to courts to question their detention and without the benefit of disclosure, i.e. seeing the evidence against them.
The president sang paens to the new law, which establishes military tribunals (sisn't the Soviets use those to crush dissent?) as a vital tool in the "War on Terra" and said it would allow prosecution of high-level terror suspects.
Here it needs to be pointed oput that prosecution of high-level terror suspects has always been possible and always been pursued vigorously. Without abrogating the Constitution.
"We believe that compelling this court to sanction executive detentions based on evidence that has been condemned in the American legal system since our nation's founding erodes the vital role of the judiciary in safeguarding the rule of law," the judges wrote.I can't say it any better than these learned and sober individuals did, so let me close with this: I want my country back!!!
The brief was filed by retired Judges Shirley M. Hufstedler, Nathaniel R. Jones, George N. Leighton, Timothy K. Lewis, Frank J. McGarr, Abner J. Mikva and Patricia M. Wald. Three of the judges — Leighton, Lewis and McGarr — were appointed by Republican presidents.
Though Congress banned the use of torture in the military commission law, the judges said military documents revealed evidence of torture that officials didn't properly address.
In one instance cited in court documents, a man who denied receiving artillery training said an interrogator beat him until he bled from his head.
"I was in a lot of pain, so I said I had the training," the man said, according to a transcript cited in court documents. "At that point, if he had asked me if I was Usama Bin Ladin, I would have said yes."
Without the court system, the judges said, there is no check on such behavior.
