Roberts: No friend of the Geneva Conventions

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/15/AR2005071501734_pf.html

This bothers me as much as anything else.

Snip~


One of the judges on the deciding panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, John G. Roberts, is said to be on the administration's list of possible Supreme Court nominees.

Snip~
The panel said courts should defer to President Bush's decision in 2002 that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to detainees Bush declares as enemy combatants and that, in any event, the conventions are not enforceable by U.S. courts in lawsuits brought by foreigners.

"This decision is a major win for the Administration," a Justice Department news release said. The Defense Department itself declined to comment.

Hamdan's lead civilian counsel, Georgetown University professor Neal Katyal, denounced the decision as "contrary to 200 years of constitutional law." He said it "places absolute trust in the president, unchecked by the Constitution, statutes of Congress and longstanding treaties." He added that it undermines the protections of the Geneva Conventions in ways that could harm U.S. interests in the future.

by a lawyer or judge should mean the loss
of their bar standing.

yeah, that's the stuff.

It's not even a conservative decision, just a terrible one.

We like the Geneva Conventions. Why? If we follow them, then our enemies are more likely to follow them. We're supposed to be better than them aren't we? Aren't we supposed to be the good guys? Shouldn't we follow the 'civilized' rules and not torture people, etc, because we're better than them?

They chop off people's heads. Should we too?

If we don't even follow the good guy rules, what chance is there that ANY future enemy of ours will.

{defeatist mode}

How dare you all try to judge Roberts based on his opinions and his decisions in the federal court of appeals? Are you going to go after his client list as a private attorney, when he was representing fatcat corporations and assisting them in screwing over the American people in pursuit of ever greater and more obscene profits?

We're better than that; just applaud President Bush for making a perceptive choice who is hard to pin down, and don't look too closely at Roberts' record, education or life.

You're all just mean!

{/defeatist mode}

"This is what you're advocating?" etc.

EVERYTHING DID change after 9/11. We lost our fucking minds and cheered doing it!

I hate this country these days. It is not the nation I grew up in. It is certainly not the one I read about in those civics classes.

Roberts is SO BAD it is hard to know where to start.

He is definitely a activist judge, as was betrayed by his comment that Roe (which is the law of the land) should be overturned.

He has articulated an anti-Geneva Convention, anti-International Law position.

He supported the brutal arrest and handcuffing of a teenager for eating a single french-fry. He asserted that this did not violate the "cruel and unusual punishment" forbidden by the Constitution.

He does not care about the Constitution or protecting our civil liberties. He would be a corrosive pestilence in the SCOUTUS, dissolving the Constitution and the Liberties it guarantees.

And isn't Geneva in Europe??

Bingo!
If he thinks people should just be unilaterally classified "enemy combatants" at the whim of the president.. without ANY checks and balances and declares that that peRson does not get any protection under the Geneva Conventions then

HE SUPPORTS TORTURE.

And everyone was relieved it's not Gonzalez,but I'm wondering what the difference is? He's just prettier I guess and oh yeah-not as well known.

and failure to uphold them is a failure to uphold US law . . . do we really want a Supreme Court justice who refuses to uphold the law of the land? . . .