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Oct. 10, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The limitations of scientific miracles

Caroline B. Glick: Lebanon on the brink --- and why it matters

Oct. 8, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: The day when the sane talk to themselves

Ana Veciana-Suarez: Many nonobservant Jews are finding religion

Oct. 7, 2008

Gary Rosenblatt: Of politics and prayer

Caroline B. Glick: The ironies of the West's collusion with the Arabs and Iran

Oct. 6, 2008

Rabbi Yitzchok R. Rubin: Mamma to the masses

Jonathan Tobin: Ahmadinejad Isn't Too Impressed

Oct. 3, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The 'living dead' are all around us

Caroline B. Glick: Olmert's parting blows

Oct. 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Often customers looking for our competitor accidentally enter our store. Can we just serve them without comment?

Jonathan Tobin: Jewish pundit quiz on next year's news

Sept. 29, 2008

Rabbi Eli Gewirtz: Lehman Brothers and the Day of Judgment

Rabbi Leiby Burnham: Apples, Honey and You

Sept. 26, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The shofar and the Echo of Sinai

Caroline B. Glick: A road paved on reality

Sept. 24, 2008

Greg Crosby: Home for the Holy Days

Ethel G. Hofman: Rosh Hashanah Favorites: Old-fashioned taste, reduced calories

Sept. 23, 2008

Caroline Glick: Liberalism or lives!?

Michael Ledeen: Dear President Ahmadinejad

Sept. 22, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I gave a check to a local merchant, but it hasn't been cashed in months. Probably they lost it. Do I have to tell them?

Diana West: We are losing Europe to Islam

Sept. 19, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: On harvesting success

Caroline B. Glick: It is time to act

Sept. 18, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Is camping the panacea to save Jewry from self-destruction?

Craig Gordon: Was SNL hilarity too much for Hillary?

Sept. 17, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: The Whole World Is Watching

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: East meets Southwest in this quick meal: MEXICAN-ASIAN TOSTADOS

Sept. 16, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. : Into the fire

Everything's Relative : Your Official Jewish Guide to the 2008 USA Presidential Election

Sept. 15, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Enabling risky behavior

Diana West: A day that will live in ... accommodating Islam

Sept. 11, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The skeleton in my closet

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein: Persecution and systematic destruction of Christians in the Middle East must be stopped

Sept. 10, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: There's Something About Sarah

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Who needs Chili's when you have these? Recipes for Mexican that taste great and are dietetic! Our commitment to freedom

Sept. 9, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Must counterinsurgency wars fail?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.:

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review June 30, 2006 / 4 Tamuz, 5766

The Supreme Court at war

By Rich Lowry


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Children play a game called "opposite day." Whatever someone says is taken to mean the opposite. Some Supreme Court justices have apparently never grown out of their appreciation of this game, to judge by their ruling in the Hamdan case involving military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay.


Last year, Congress (you might have heard of it — it writes the nation's laws) passed a bill signed into law by the president of the United States (he also should be familiar — the nation's commander in chief). It said that "no court, justice or judge" shall have the jurisdiction to consider habeas corpus applications of detainees at Gitmo. It would take a legal escape artist on par with David Blaine to wiggle out of that one, but, sure enough, five Supreme Court justices were up to the task.


The Supreme Court has an important role in our constitutional scheme, but it is not fit to, nor was it ever meant to, render fundamental judgments about matters of war and peace. For that we have the elected branches, primarily the executive, which has the flexibility and the focus to prosecute wars. But today's court knows no bounds.


In writing for the majority in Hamdan, Justice John Paul Stevens ripped off his black robe and beat his chest, declaring to the world, "Stand aside Congress, stand aside Mr. President, you constitutional weaklings. We, the court, can win the War on Terror and will do it with judicial overreaching, tendentious statutory construction and implausible renderings of international law."


The saving grace of Hamdan is that it preserves the option of trying al-Qaida members before military commissions, as long as Congress and the president work to craft the commissions just so. Otherwise, the decision is a disgrace and is a step toward affording members of al-Qaida the full panoply of rights and protections criminal suspects enjoy in the American civil court system.


Or, as Nancy Pelosi put it in a statement hailing the decision, it "reaffirms the American ideal that all are entitled to the basic guarantees of our justice system." That "all" is quite literal, whether someone is a foreigner or an American, an al-Qaida warrior or a shoplifter. Never have enemy fighters — especially fighters belonging to a criminal band with no regard for the laws of war — had it so good.


The court moves in this direction by effectively reading al-Qaida into the Geneva Conventions. The conventions are a treaty to which nations voluntarily bind themselves. Al-Qaida has never signed on, since 1) it isn't a nation; and 2) it would be an obstacle to practices that are central to its organization, including slaughtering civilians and beheading prisoners. But the court bestows a bonus membership to al-Qaida, because it furthers the court's goal of dictating how captured al-Qaida members should be tried.

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It's not that the court's reading of the Geneva Conventions is entirely implausible, but that the president has another, more reasonable reading of Geneva that there is no reason for the court to trample on. But trample it does, a quality of its decision throughout.


Justice Clarence Thomas writes in dissent, "Those Justices who today disregard the commander-in-chief's wartime decisions, only 10 days ago deferred to the judgment of the Corps of Engineers with regard to a matter much more within the competence of lawyers, upholding that agency's wildly implausible conclusions that a storm drain is a tributary of the water of the United States. It goes without saying that there is much more at stake here than storm drains."


From its conclusion that Geneva applies to al-Qaida, the court works its way toward mandating that military commissions must duplicate the structure of courts-martial. This in itself needn't be disastrous, but the court is on a dangerous path. The decision sets the table for more severe judicial interference in the war-making of the executive branch and Congress. Justice Stevens surely has many impressive talents, but fighting al-Qaida isn't one of them.

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© 2006 King Features Syndicate

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