SCOTUS refuses to hear Gov't. "secrecy" case, Liberal media depressed
The Supreme Court refused Monday to consider whether the government properly withheld names and other details about hundreds of foreigners detained in the weeks and months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The high court turned down a request to review the secrecy surrounding detainees, nearly all Arabs or Muslims[Uh huh. The killers who attacked us on 9/11 weren't white Swedish Baptists!--Jen], who were picked up in the United States following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Most of the more than 700 detainees at issue in the case have since been deported. Some picked up after Sept. 11 were charged with crimes [And in the case of the "Buffalo/Lackawanna Six," the case has been expanded!--Jen], and others were held as material witnesses. Only Zacarias Moussaoui, who was detained before the Sept. 11 attacks, is being prosecuted in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks.
A Washington study center[WTF is a "study center?"--ed.] critical of the Bush administration responses after Sept. 11 sued to learn names and other basic information about the detainees. The appeal raises constitutional questions under the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and legal questions under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
[...]
Twenty-three news organizations and media groups, including The Associated Press, [Who wrote and published this very story!--J.T.] joined in asking the high court to hear the case.
The government grabbed people on thin suspicion, then moved to deport detainees who had no demonstrated link to terrorism but who had violated civil immigration laws, lawyers for Martin's Washington-based group argued to the court.
[Gee, there's nothing like a straight reporting of the "news" with no bias in sight, huh?--Jen]
The high court's decision not to review the case represents a victory for the Bush administration. [You can tell that the AP is just sick about this!--Jen] Last week, the high court disappointed the administration by taking on a higher-profile terrorism case involving the rights of an American citizen captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. The Bush administration had argued strongly that it has authority to hold the man, Yaser Esam Hamdi, indefinitely and without charges in a military prison.
[...]
The justices had earlier rejected several cases that raised more oblique questions about the government response to the terror threat. One rejected case involved a similar issue to Monday's secrecy case. It asked whether the government could keep reporters and the public away from closed-door deportation hearings.
The Bush administration has argued that releasing names and details of the arrests would give terrorists a window on the U.S. post-Sept. 11 terror investigation.
[That's exactly right and I'm thrilled that that's what our government is doing, too. If the Enemy knew who we had in custody, then they'd have a pretty good idea of what we'd found out about planned future attacks.--Jennie]
"In any ongoing law enforcement investigation, requiring the police to open their investigative files and provide a comprehensive list of the persons interviewed and detained — and by the same token to reveal which persons they have not interviewed and detained — would necessarily interfere with the investigation by providing a roadmap of law enforcement's activities, strategies and methods," Solicitor General Theodore Olson argued in the latest detainee secrecy case.
God bless Ted Olson. I'm sure you remember that his dear and lovely wife Barbara was killed on the plane that smashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.
The Liberal Media can go pound sand.
As long as they continue to obfuscate the issues be confusing the legal status of illegal aliens, enemy combatants and American citizens and trying their damnedest to make the Bush Administration look evil when all it's doing is to make America as secure as possible from Islamist terror attacks, while preserving our cherished civil liberties, they can moan, bitch and cry all they want to...and they will, as we know only too well by now.
Thank God the Supreme Court passed this one over, as they should have.
They've only agreed to hear the Hamdi case because he was an American citizen and I hope it's because they want to settle the prosecution of POWs and enemy combatants, even if they were at one time Americans who turned against our country in a war, once and for all for the duration of this war.
