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Dec. 1, 2008

Max Freidlander, as told to Jacklyn C. Wadler: India Inkings

Mark Steyn: Whodunit!?

Nov. 28, 2008

Rabbi Ahron Rapps: An evil seed that didn't have to be

Melanie Phillips: Carpe diem --- or can we all relax now?

Nov. 26, 2008

Michael Feldberg: Meet the Orthodox Jew who laid groundwork for scientific development of ordnance that undergirds America's current world leadership

Andrea Simantov: Shades of life

Nov. 25, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Getting Emotional For Influence

The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman : Thanksiving feast!

Nov. 24, 2008

Rabbi S. Binyomin Ginsberg: 'I just Became a grandchild!'

Barry Rubin: Don't flatter your enemies, protect your friends

Nov. 21, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Money matters?

Caroline B. Glick: Civilization walks the plank

Nov. 20, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Bronfman's blindness

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: Portobellos add a hearty flavor to pasta with pesto

Nov, 19, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Spread the wealth? Jewish tradition and income equality

Elliot B. Gertel: 'Mad Men': Tackling prejudices or reinforcing them?

Nov, 18, 2008

Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn: The End of the Age of Reason

Jonathan Tobin: Does Barack + Bibi = Disaster?

Nov, 17, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The End of the Age of Reason

Diana West: Gulling Americans into making terror legit?

Nov, 14, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The Power of Spiritual Inertia

Caroline B. Glick: The perils ahead

Nov, 13, 2008

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: How Bush and Obama together could change the Middle East dynamic

The Kosher Gourmet by JeanMarie Brownson: Sweet and savory, crispy and meltingly tender bestilla

Nov, 12, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : Tyrannical Co-Workers

Michael Doyle: High Court to consider today donated monuments that may have religious messages in public parks

Nov, 11, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Will Obama stop government officials considering institutionalizing financial jihad?

Jonathan Tobin: They Will Decide Their Own Fate

Nov, 10, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: $8 billion, modern-day Tower of Babel being built?

Barry Rubin: A letter to the president-elect from a Middle East realist

Nov, 7, 2008

Rabbi Francis Nataf: Of Children and Immortality

Caroline B. Glick: Livni's Obama strategy

Nov, 6, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: How I tricked a classroom of apathetic students into grasping the fallacy of moral relativism

The Kosher Gourmet By Gina Kim: Tips for making the perfect soup --- includes recipes

Nov, 5, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Destitute Debtors

Bruce Weinstein: 'Religulos': Bad title,even worse movie

Nov, 4, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Treasury Dept. submits to Shariah law

Frida Ghitis: A surprise for Obama in the Middle East

Nov, 3, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Who says Jews are Smart?

Jonathan Tobin: Was He Wrong About Everything?

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 Sept. 27, 2006 / 5 Tishrei, 5766

On to (military) justice

By Paul Greenberg


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Alexander Hamilton may have been a great statesman and financier, the kind of conservative who is also a visionary, but he was no prophet. At least not in Federalist Paper No. 78, in which he assured voters that the judiciary would always be "the least dangerous" branch of the proposed new federal government.


Learned in the law as he was, Colonel Hamilton could not have foreseen this present Supreme Court, which has vastly complicated the work of both the country's military and its intelligence operatives.


The court began by ignoring Congress' explicit instruction in the Detainee Treatment Act that "no court, justice or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."


Then the court — to borrow a phrase attributed to a former governor of Arkansas — opened a whole box of Pandoras. A five-justice majority of the court proceeded, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, to put all plans for military commissions on hold until Congress would agree to re-establish them with new, unprecedented protections for unlawful enemy combatants, including Osama bin Laden's personal driver. Erasing the historic distinction between lawful and unlawful enemy combatants, the court ruled that these military tribunals also violated the Geneva Conventions, even though that treaty applies only to the governments that signed it, and al-Qaida was certainly never a signatory. (Its favored form of justice consists of beheadings on video.)


The Supreme Court's recent rulings in Hamdan and similar cases provide the best illustration yet of the late Robert Jackson's observation that the judiciary is ill-equipped to make foreign policy, especially military policy.


"Such decisions," Mr. Justice Jackson once observed, "are wholly confided by our Constitution to the political departments of the government, Executive and Legislative. They are delicate, complex, and involve large elements of prophecy. They are and should be undertaken only by those directly responsible to the people whose welfare they advance or imperil. They are decisions of a kind for which the Judiciary has neither aptitude, facilities nor responsibility . . . ."


No wonder Robert Jackson's stature in law and statecraft grows year by year, decade after decade, as this Supreme Court continues to bear out his warning against an over-reaching judiciary. For the moment it has prevented the country from using military tribunals against a clear and all too present danger like al-Qaida, even though such tribunals go back to George Washington's time.


The administration's original proposal for establishing these military commissions afforded the accused a wide range of rights, including the right to be represented by counsel, to call witnesses and produce evidence, and the right not to testify or be forced to give incriminating evidence. The Bush administration drew the line at sharing classified information with suspected terrorists, but that reasonable precaution outraged its more reflexive, and unreflecting, critics.


You would think that by now the country would have learned the dangers of treating a war against this nation like any other matter for the ordinary criminal courts. Andrew C. McCarthy, who helped prosecute the terrorists in the original bombing of the World Trade Center back in 1993, has noted the dangers of revealing classified information during the course of such trials:


"Information that could be used against us in the ongoing war. Information the revelation of which might induce foreign intelligence services to refrain from cooperating with us. Information of the kind jihadists were lavishly given during the 1990s, when terrorism was regarded as a crime and al-Qaida reaped the benefits of disclosure-rich standards that govern American civil trials."


Under the compromise that the White House and key senators have reached, the defendant before a military tribunal would be allowed to see any evidence against him, but any classified material would only be summed up rather than risk revealing its source or how it was gathered — or any other details that would be of use to an enemy.


As for the techniques used by the military or the CIA to interrogate prisoners, rather than try to define exactly what is and what isn't torture, Congress has wisely left the subject where it should have been left in the first place — to common sense and a general prohibition of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."


Trying to fine-tune interrogations of enemy suspects by law is ridiculous. It would be like trying to write a set script for all good cop, bad cop routines. Any more specific rules governing interrogations are to be published in the Federal Register for all to debate. Which is how the system, slow and balky as it is, should work.


What the Supreme Court has confused, the other two branches are now working to straighten out. Here's hoping the court will let their work stand, but there's no telling which way its majority will go after Hamdan. Contrary to Alexander Hamilton, the judiciary may prove the most dangerous branch of government if its decisions keep the executive from preventing another September 11th.


It may be too much to hope that the honorable justices will keep in mind another wise piece of advice from Mr. Justice Jackson: "There is danger that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact."

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