You mean it started before Bush?


"The Judge Who Gave Us Gitmo"
Paul Moreno has an fascinating thought.

The judge most responsible for the Gitmo situation was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., prominent in the pantheon of civil libertarians. Shortly after the Spanish-American War, President Theodore Roosevelt was concerned that the Supreme Court might insist that all constitutional guarantees extended to our newly-acquired empire—in popular parlance, that “the Constitution follows the flag.” With a Court seat open in 1902, TR sought and obtained a pledge from Holmes that he would not apply this standard. Holmes then lied to the press about his secret meeting with the President. He dutifully voted with the majority in the so-called Insular Cases, which held, for example that the right to a jury trial did not extend to Filipinos or Hawaiians.

Thus we carved out special exceptions where the guarantees that the Constitution imposes on the federal government do not apply.

File this under "things that make you go hmmmmm."

— NeoWayland

Posted: Tue - January 27, 2009 at 03:37 PM  Tag


 ◊  ◊   ◊  ◊ 

Random selections from NeoWayland's library


Pagan Vigil "Because LIBERTY demands more than just black or white"
© 2005 - 2009 All Rights Reserved