Andrew McCarthy of National Review provides a devastating commentary on the judge who wants to release the Uighurs into the United States (see previous post). His article is titled “American Gun Owner = Trained Jihadist” and the subtitle scares me to death: “The Uighur saga provides a window on Obama-style counterterrorism.” The whole article is well worth reading, but the first paragraph gives it in a nutshell:
Are you a bitter clinger? One of those American gun owners belittled by Sen. Barack Obama, filled with antipathy for people who aren’t like you? You know, people like foreign Muslims whose idea of a few weeks’ vacation is a course of paramilitary training at an al-Qaeda-affiliated camp?
Yes, we’re bitter clingers, like the people of Grand Island, Greeley, and all those other places that question bringing in people “not like them” — people whose idea of being Americans is to make others conform to their religious preferences. And now our betters are telling us that just because the Uighurs trained at terrorist camps doesn’t mean they won’t make suitable neighbors. Neighbors for us, that is, not for the judge. When the U.S. government disagreed,
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit told the government in June that it needed to come up with a better rationale for branding the Uighurs enemy combatants. Judge Urbina then dramatically upped the ante, not only concluding the detainees were not combatants but ordering them released into the United States. The government sought an emergency stay of that order so that the D.C. Circuit could hear its appeal.
That was the occasion for yesterday’s ruling, and for Judge Rogers to share her very interesting views. As the Washington Post reports (italics mine):
Justice Department lawyers have argued that only the president or Congress has the legal authority to order the Uighurs’ release into the United States. They have also said that immigration laws would preclude them from entering the country because they received weapons training at a camp operated by a designated terror organization.
Rogers rejected those arguments, writing that courts have the power to order the release under habeas corpus, a centuries-old legal doctrine that allows prisoners or detainees to challenge their confinement in federal court. The judge also rejected the argument that immigration laws would bar the Uighurs’ entry, writing that such an interpretation would “rob” the men’s rights of meaning.
Even if the men had received weapons training, she wrote, that “cannot alone show they are dangerous, unless millions of United States resident citizens who have received fire arms training are deemed to be dangerous as well.”
McCarthy points out that the judge is placing the judiciary above the elected branches of government.
Congress has included in the conditions it has set proscriptions against the entry of aliens who have had paramilitary training in terrorist camps or are members of terrorist organizations. The Uighurs are disqualified under both categories.
And he goes on to point out:
The judge is politically unaccountable: We can get rid of a president who endangers us; what do we do about the judge?
And here is his pointed bottom line:
Most unbelievable of all, though, is Judge Rogers’s take on guns. Can you imagine drawing a moral and factual equivalence between United States citizens who own firearms and alien terrorist trainees who have gone to jihadist camps and received instruction in explosives, close-combat, assassination tactics, and jihadist ideology? The mind reels.
Sen. Obama has indicated that, if elected, he will return us to his vision of the “rule of law”: The pre-9/11 days when counterterrorism was the province of the federal courts. How reassuring that, as Colin Powell assures us, Obama is possessed of such “intellectual rigor.” After all, that’s what enables him to shun the simplistic Bush approach of regarding terrorists as wartime enemies . . . and all its attendant false choices.
Sure, the Uighurs may move in next door to you. But not to worry: Obama promises you’ll have the enormous satisfaction of knowing your reputation in the international community — in places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan — is now markedly improved. And you can sleep well at night knowing jurists just like Judith Rogers could soon be filling vacancies on federal courts throughout the country.