Sunday, March 26, 2006

Scalia = jerk

Two Scalia quotes about Guantanamo detainees -

"War is war, and it has never been the case that when you captured a combatant you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts," Scalia said in the talk at the University of Freiburg, according to Newsweek. "Give me a break."

...

Scalia, asked at Freiburg whether detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have protections under international conventions, gave the suggestion short shrift.


So they don't have any rights under US law or under international conventions. And you know, even if that was correct to the letter of the law (although I don't believe it is), it's obvious that that's not where Scalia's coming from here. He's comfortable relegating an entire group of people to subhuman status without benefit of due process. It's nice to know that one of our nation's highest jurists has such respect for his fellow man.

I know that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights doesn't have the force of law, but The 1968 United Nations International Conference on Human Rights decided it "constitutes an obligation for the members of the international community" to all persons. Oh, wait, I forgot, we don't listen to those UN pansies.

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3 comments:

SB Gypsy said...

Not to mention the Geneva Conventions, which are the rule of law in the US right now. A rose by any other name...

The Disgruntled Chemist said...

Did you hear about this?

Scalia flipped the bird (well, the Sicilian version where you do that thing with the underside of your chin) in church the other day.

As you say, Scalia=jerk.

michelline said...

the problem is most of these people they don't have much evidence on, except they were shooting at them, and the fear if they let them go, they will just take up arms again at our Troops, so i can understand why they are keeping them in the prisons, as long as we are not torturing them (real torture), i don't really see a problem with it.

But see, that's the problem, not only do they not have much evidence on these people, they also weren't all shooting at Americans. How can you not have a problem with this? Picking up people based on hearsay and circumstance, and then holding them without trial of any sort indefinitely. This is one of the hallmarks of tyranny. As I've said before, I'm sure most of the people are guilty. But we'll never know for sure since we won't give any of them a fair hearing.