St. Pete Times: If judges won't stand up to Bush, who will?

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/03/05/Columns/If_judges_won_t_stand.shtml

By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, Times Perspective Columnist
Published March 5, 2006

Federal judges are shrugging their shoulders, just when they need to square them. With a feckless, partisan Congress refusing to police even the most blatant illegal and unconstitutional actions of the Bush administration, the courts are essential to setting our nation back on the right path.

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After an enlightened Supreme Court ruling in 2004 that said prisoners held at Guantanamo could challenge their status in court, the Defense Department stopped the flow of men into the facility and started diverting them to a more secretive prison in Afghanistan.

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The men can't be returned to China, where they would likely be tortured. And the Bush administration doesn't want to admit them into the United States, because that may give the Guantanamo detainees a firmer legal basis for getting into court and challenging the conditions there. So they are being held in limbo.

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After hearing a habeas petition of two of the Uighurs, U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled in December that they were in fact being held illegally. But then he did something shocking. Robertson refused to provide a remedy, saying he lacked the authority to order the men's release. They had won, but they would wake up the next day and every morning for the foreseeable future with guards and shackles as companions.

...oh, what a tangled web we weave.

better?

this is what happens when a bunch of lying bloody fingered thieves make fools out of a vulnerable country still hurting from a truly horrific attack on New York City. And when our own party sold us out because they were cowards.

is that they are having a heck of a time justifying their policies when people who are not of Arab descent are involved.

The can scream 9/11 at the top of their lungs, but these policies are made to look ridiculous when held up to parallel situations.

that it was LIHOP. It demonized the very peoples that they had been planning on attacking for so very very long. In fact, that's what almost pushes me over into the MIHOP camp.

Shock and Awe wasn't a new idea for these bastards. It had been off the drawing board and in the works for a long time. They just needed 'justification' for their actions.

I thought this was some very interesting fallout.