Doug Lamborn is afraid to uphold even our most basic founding principle
Jeez, the fear-mongering and cowardice of our CD-5 representative is depressing:
Colorado Springs' congressman fears closing the prison housing terror suspects at the Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could result in their being transferred to Colorado.I agree it would be a security challenge. But it shouldn't be a challenge to accede to the Conservative court's impeccable smackdown of King George Bush's kangaroo contraption. And Doug shouldn't be fearful that we adhere to our most sacred founding idea: people have the right to see a judge and respond to the charges against them - that's called habeas corpus - "having the body":
Rep. Doug Lamborn, a first-term Republican, toured the military prison Friday and said afterward he doesn't want the 250 detainees there moved to federal prisons, including the high-security Supermax in Florence, south of Colorado Springs.
"There are some people here who are bent on destroying our way of life," Lamborn said in a phone interview, referring to the "enemy combatants" captured during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday restated his desire to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, a day after a Supreme Court ruling allowed detainees to challenge their captivity in federal courts.
As the administration considers alternatives to Guantanamo Bay, Lamborn fears they'll set their sights on Florence and the prison where a number of convicted terrorists, including Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski and 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, are incarcerated.
"I don't want that happening under any circumstance," Lamborn said.
In the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the President and the Republican-controlled Congress said to the Court: Stop meddling in the handling of Gitmo detainees. We do not think that habeas extends to Gitmo, and even if it does, we've produced a constitutionally adequate substitute.Doug's supposedly a trained lawyer. And he calls himself a conservative, yet he can't get it through his head that George Bush has taken on a radical expansion of the presidency that none of these small-government chirpers would ever shut up about if Bill Clinton had done the same thing.
In Boumediene, the Court responded: to the contrary, constitutional habeas does extend to Gitmo, and the remedy you've offered is not adequate.
It is still available to the President and Congress to try to suspend the writ, and the Court could then decide whether the suspension was successful. However, there is almost no chance that the current Congress would agree to suspend the writ. It is also likely that the Congress that passed the MCA would not have voted to suspend the writ if the choice were clearly posed on those terms and a clear statement of intent to suspend was written into the legislation. In any case, it is likely that if the MCA were presented to Congress today, much of it would not have passed.
And that is precisely the point. Boumediene is further proof, if any were necessary, that the constitutional revolution proposed by the Bush Administration after September 11, 2001 has failed.
Despite what the article's commenters say, Doug Lamborn is exactly in lock step with the administration. I don't think I've heard an original thought from him since the first battles of his CD-5 race against the eminently more intelligent and qualified Jay Fawcett. The voters of El Paso County never cease to amaze me....
Oh yeah, and then Supermax and the guards might get appropriate funding for their job, though, knowing how the Bush administration funds our security requirements, I wouldn't count on it.
Labels: Constitution, Doug Lamborn, Iraq war
posted by Zappatero @ 11:18 AM
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