Habeas Crappus

Tom DeLay posts his thoughts on the Boumediene v. Bush decision:

Neither the United States military, its elected commanders in the executive branch, nor its representatives in Congress are now in control of America’s prosecution of the war on terror. Justice Kennedy is, or he seems to think.

Until he is disabused of this notion by a Congress with the guts to assert itself, the following not only may happen, but will, and very quickly:

- Captured terrorists will refuse to answer any questions without access to a lawyer;

- Captured terrorists will demand the public disclosure of the military’s evidence against them, thus exposing the means and methods employed by our intelligence community to gather such evidence;

- Captured terrorists will demand to confront their accusers, who will be soldiers on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan, in open court back here in the states; and,

- Captured terrorists will go venue shopping, filing their habeas claims in dozens of courts in hopes of getting the most liberal activist judge they can find.

Unless, I suppose, terrorists suddenly start fighting to the death in the battlefield.

The question is, what are conservative legislators going to do about it. Beginning in 1996 and continuing throughout the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, we had an aggressive, concrete agenda to combat judicial activism and supremacy.

Because Congress creates lower federal courts, Congress can also set its jurisdiction. Thus, except for the narrow field of cases in which the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction – cases involving individual states, ambassadors, and the like – Congress can simply remove the Supreme Court from the picture. A “court stripping” strategy would reassert the legislative and executive branches’ co-equal status as interpreters of the Constitution. Much of the groundwork has already been set.

Notice, by the way, what is not being considered.

We're not hearing anyone say, "They have made their ruling, now let them enforce it."

Nor, despite the ravings of the "911 Truth" or "BusHitler" crowd, does anyone seem the least bit worried that Justice Kennedy is going to disappear some night.